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WOMAN'S Work in the Civil War: 



-?7 



A RECORD 



HEROISM, PATRIOTISM AND PATIENCE. 



BY 

L. P. BROCKETT, M.D., 

Author op " History of the Civil War," " Philanthropic Results of the War," Our Great 

Captains," " Life of Abraham Lincoln," " The Camp, The Battle 

Field, and The Hospital," &c., &c. 

AND 

MRS. MARY C. VAUGHAN. 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION, 

By henry W. bellows, D.D., 

Fresideiit XJ. S. Sanitary Conamission. 



ILLUSTRATED WITH SIXTEEN STEEL ENGRAVINGS. 



ZEIGLER, McCURDY & CO., 

No. 501 CHESTNUT STREET, PHILADELPHIA, 
LOMBARD BLOCK, CHICAGO, ILL.; No. 509 OLIVE STREET, ST. LOUIS, MO. 

R. H. CURRAN, 

48 WINTER STREET, BOSTON, MASS. 

1867. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by 

L. P. BKOCKETT, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern 
District of New York. 



King & Baird, Printers, 

607 Sansom Street, Philadelphia. 



Westcott & Thomson, 

Stereotypers. 



TO 



The Loyal Women of America, 

WHOSE PATRIOTIC CONTRIBUTIONS, TOILS AND SACRIFICES, ENABLED THEIR 

SISTERS, WHOSE HISTORY IS HERE RECORDED, TO MINISTER 

RELIEF AND CONSOLATION TO OUR WOUNDED 

AND SUFFERING HEROES; 

AND WHO BY THEIR DEVOTION, THEIR LABORS, AND THEIR PATIENT ENDURANCE 

OF PRIVATION AND DISTRESS OF BODY AND SPIRIT, WHEN CALLED 

TO GI^TE UP THEIR BELOVED ONES FOR THE 

NATION'S DEFENSE, 

HAVE WON FOR THEMSELVES ETERNAL HONOR, AND THE UNDYING REMEM- 
BRANCE OF THE PATRIOTS OF ALL TIME, 

WE DEDICATE THIS 

VOLUME. 



PREFACE 



The preparation of this work, or rather the collection of material ror it, 
was commenced in the autumn of 1863. While engaged in the compilation 
of a little book on "The Philanthropic Results of the War" for circulation 
aDroad, in the summer of that year, the writer became so deeply impressed 
with the extraordinary sacrifices and devotion of loyal women, in the national 
cause, that he determined to make a record of them for the honor of his 
country. A voluminous correspondence then commenced and continued to 
the present time, soon demonstrated how general were the acts of patriotic 
devotion, and an extensive tour, undertaken the following summer, to obtain 
by personal observation and intercourse with these heroic women, a more 
clear and comprehensive idea of what they had done and were doing, only 
served to increase his admiration for their zeal, patience, and self-denying 
effort. 

IMeantime the war still continued, and the collisions between Grant and Lee, 
in the East, and Sherman and Johnston, in the South, the fierce campaign 
between Thomas and Hood in Tennessee, Sheridan's annihilating defeats 
of Early in the valley of the Shenandoah, and Wilson's magnificent expe- 
dition in Mississippi, Alabama, and Greorgia, as well as the mixed naval 
and military victories at Mobile and Wilmington, were fruitful in wounds, 
sickness, and death. Never had the gentle and patient ministrations of 
woman been so needful as in the last year of the war; and never had they 
been so abundantly bestowed, and with such zeal and self-forgetfulness. 

From Andersonville, and Millen, from Charleston, and Florence, from 
Salisbury, and Wilmington, from Belle Isle, and Libby Prison, came also, 
in these later months of the war, thousands of our bravest and noblest 
heroes, captured by the rebels, the feeble remnant of the tens of thousands 
imprisoned there, a majority of whom had perished of cold, nakedness, 
starvation, and disease, in those charnel houses, victims of the fiendish 
malignity of the rebel leaders. These poor fellows, starved to the last 
degree of emaciation, crippled and dying from frost and gangrene, many of 

21 



99 



PEEFACE. 



them idiotic from their sufferings, or with the fierce fever of typhus, more 
deadly than sword or minie bullet, raging in their veins, were brought 
to Annapolis and to Wilmington, and unmindful of the deadly infection, 
gentle and tender women ministered to them as faithfully and lovingly, 
as if they were their own brothers. Ever and anon, in these works 
of mercy, one of these fair ministrants died a martyr to her faithful- 
ness, asking, often only, to be buried beside her "boys," but the work never 
ceased while there was a soldier to be nursed. Nor were these the only 
fields in which noble service was rendered to humanity by the women of 
our time. In the larger associations of our cities, day after day, and year 
after year, women served in summer's heat and winter's cold, at their desks, 
corresponding with auxiliary aid societies, taking account of goods received 
for sanitary supplies, re-packing and shipping them to the points where 
they were needed, inditing and sending out circulars appealing for aid, in 
work more prosaic but equally needful and patriotic with that performed in 
the hospitals; and throughout every village and hamlet in the country, 
women were toiling, contriving, submitting to privation, performing unusual 
and severe labors, all for the soldiers. In the general hospitals of the cities 
and larger towns, the labors of the special diet kitchen, and of the hospi- 
tal nurse were performed steadily, faithfully, and uncomplainingly, though 
there also, ever and anon, some fair toiler laid down her life in the service. 
There were many too in still other fields of labor, who showed their love 
for their country; the faithful women who, in the Philadelphia Refresh- 
ment Saloons, fed the hungry soldier on his way to or from the battle-field, 
till in the aggregate, they had dispensed nearly eight hundred thousand 
meals, and had cared for thousands of sick and wounded ; the matrons of 
the Soldiers' Homes, Lodges, and Rests; the heroic souls who devoted 
themselves to the noble work of raising a nation of bondmen to intelligence 
and frejjdom ; those who attempted the still more hopeless task of rousing 
the blunted intellect and cultivating the moral nature of the degraded and 
abject poor whites ; and those who in circumstances of the greatest peril, 
manifested their fearless and undying attachment to their country and its 
flag; all these were entitled to a place in such a record. What wonder, 
then, that, pursuing his self-appointed task assiduously, the writer found it 
growing upon him ; till the question came, not, who should be inscribed in 
this roll, but who could be omitted, since it was evident no single volume 
could do justice to all. 

In the autumn of 1865, Mrs. Mary C. Vaughan, a skilful and practiced 
writer, whose tastes and sympathies led her to take an interest in the work, 
became associated with the writer ii its preparation, and to her zeal in col- 



PREFACE. 23 

lecting, and skill in arranging the materials obtained, many of tlie interest- 
ing sketches of the volume are due. We have in the prosecution of our 
work been constantly embarrassed, by the reluctance of some who deserved 
a prominent place, to suffer anything to be communicated concerning their 
labors; by the promises, often repeated but never fulfilled, of others to 
furnish facts and incidents which they alone could supply, and by the for- 
wardness of a few, whose services were of the least moment, in presenting 
their claims. 

We have endeavored to exercise a wise and careful discrimination both 
in avoiding the introduction of any name unworthy of a place in such a 
record, and in giving the due meed of honor to those who have wrought 
most earnestly and acceptably. We cannot hope that we have been com- 
pletely successful ; the letters even now, daily received, render it probable 
that there are some, as faithful and eelf-sacrificing as any of those whose 
services we have recorded, of whom we have failed to obtain information ; 
and that some of those who entered upon their work of mercy in the closing 
campaigns of the war, by their zeal and earnestness, have won the right to 
a place. We have not, knowingly, however, omitted the name of any 
faithful worker, of whom we could obtain information, and we feel assured 
that our record is far more full and complete, than any other which has 
been, or is likely to be prepared, and that the number of prominent and 
active laborers in the national cause who have escaped our notice is com- 
paratively small. 

We take pleasure in acknowledging our obligations to Rev. Dr. Bellows, 
President of the United States Sanitary Commission, for many services and 
much valuable information; to Honorable James E. Yeatman, the Presi- 
dent of the Western Sanitary Commission, to Rev. J. G. Forman, late 
Secretary of that Commission, and now Secretary of the Unitarian Asso- 
ciation, and his accomphshed wife, both of whom were indefatigable in 
their efforts to obtain facts relative to western ladies; to Rev. N. M. Mann, 
now of Kenosha, Wisconsin, but formerly Chaplain and Agent of the 
Western Sanitary Commission, at Vicksburg; to Professor J. S. Newberry, 
now of Columbia College, but through the war the able Secretary of the 
Western Department of the United States Sanitary Commission; to Mrs. 
M. A. Livermore, of Chicago, one of the managers of the Northwestern 
Sanitary Commission; to Rev. Q. S. F. Savage, Secretary of the Western 
Department of the American Tract Society, Boston, Rev. William De 
Loss Love, of Milwaukee, author of a work on "Wisconsin in the War." 
Samuel B. Fales, Esq., of Philadelphia, so long and nobly identified with 
the Volunteer Refreshment Saloon, Dr. A. N. Read, of Norwalk, Ohio, 



24 PEEFACE. 

late one of the Medical Inspectors of the Sanitary Commission, Di. Joseph 
Parrish, of Philadelphia, also a Medical Inspector of the Commission, Mrs. 
M. M. Husband, of Philadelphia, one of the most faithful workers in field 
hospitals during the war, Miss Katherine P. Wormeley, of Newport, Khode 
Island, the accomplished historian of the Sanitary Commission, Mrs. W. 
H. Holstein, of Bridgeport, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Miss Maria 
M. C. Hall, of Washington, District of Columbia, and Miss Louise Tit- 
comb, of Portland, Maine. From many of these we have received infor- 
mation indispensable to the completeness and success of our work ; infor- 
mation too, often afforded at great inconvenience and labor. We commit 
our book, then, to the loyal women of our country, as an earnest and con- 
scientious effort to portray some phases of a heroism which will make 
American women famous in all the future ages of history ; and with the 
full conviction that thousands more only lacked the opportunity, not the 
will or endurance, to do, in the same spirit of self-sacrifice, what these have 
done. 

L. P. B. 
Brooklyn, N. Y., February, 1867. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

DEDICATION 3 

PREFACE 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION BY HENRY W. BELLOWS, D. D 

INTEODUCTOKY CHAPTER. 

Patriotism in some form, an attribute of woman in all nations and climes — Its modes of mani- 
festation — Paeans for victory — Lamentations for the death of a heroic leader — Personal 
leadership by women — The assassination of tyrants — The care of the sick and wounded of 
national armies — The hospitals established by the Empress Helena — The Beguines and 
their successors — The cantiuieres, vivandleres, etc. — Other modes in which women mani- 
fested their patriotism — Florence Nightingale and her labors — The results — The awakening 
of patriotic zeal among American women at the opening of the war — The organization 
of philanthropic effort — Hospital nurses — Miss Dix's rejection of great numbers of appli- 
cants on account of youth — Hired nurses — Their services generally prompted by patriotisni 
rather than pay — The State relief agents (ladies) at Washington — The hospital transport 
system of the Sanitary Commission — Mrs. Harris's, Miss Barton's, Mrs. Fales', Miss Gilson's, 
and other ladies' services at the front during the battles of 1862 — Services of other ladies at 
Chancellorsville, at Gettysburg — The Field Relief of the Sanitary Commission, and services 
of ladies in the later battles — Voluntary services of women in the armies in the field at 
the West — Services in the hospitals of garrisons and fortified towns — Soldiers' homes and 
lodges, and their matrons — Homes for Refugees — Instruction of the Freedmen — Refresh- 
ment Saloons at Philadelphia — Regular visiting of hospitals in the large cities — The Sol- 
diers' Aid Societies, and their mode of operation — The extraordinary labors of the managers 
of the Branch Societies — Government clothing contracts — Mrs. Springer, Miss Wormeley 
and Miss Gilson — The managers of the local Soldiers' Aid Societies — The sacrifices made by 
the poor to contribute supplies — Examples — The labors of the young and the old — Inscrip- 
tions on articles — The poor seamstress — Five hundred bushels of wheat — The five dollar 
,; gold piece— The army of martyrs— The effect of this female patriotism in stimulating the 
courage of the soldiers — Lack of persistence in this work among the Women of the 
South— Present and future— Effect of patjiutism and seU'-saerifice in elevating and enno- 
bling the female character 65-94 

PART I. SUPERINTENDENT OF NURSES. 
MISS DOROTHEA L. DIX. 

Early history — Becomes intei-ested in the condition of prison convicts — Visit to Europe — Returnfl 
in 1837, and devotes herself to improving the condition of paupers, lunatics and prisoners — 
4 -25 



26 CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Her efforts for the establishment of Insane Asylums — Second visit to Europe — Her first 
work in the war the nursing of Massachusetts soldiers in Baltimore — Appointment, as 
superintendent of nurses — Her selections— DiflBculties in her position— Her other duties- 
Mrs. Livermore's account of her labors — The adjutant-general's order — Dr. Bellows' esti- 
mate of her work — Her kindness to her nurses— Her publications — Her manners and ad- 
dress — Labors for the insane poor since the war 97-108 



PAKT II. LADIES WHO MINISTEEED TO THE SICK AND 
WOUNDED IN CAMP, FIELD, AND GENEEAL HOSPITALS. 

CLARA HARLOWE BARTON. 

Early life — Teaching — The Bordentown school — Obtains a situation in the Patent Office — Her 
readiness to help others — Her native genius for nursing — Removed from office in 1857 — 
Return to Washington in 1861 — Nursing and pro^'iding for Massachusetts soldiei's at the 
Capitol in April, 1861 — Hospital and sanitary work in 1861 — Death of her father — "Wash- 
ington hospitals iigain — Going to the front — Cedar Mountain — The second Bull Run battle — 
Chantilly — Heroic labors at Antietam — Soft bread — Three barrels of flour and a bag of 
salt — Thirty lanterns for that night of gloom — The race for Fredericksburg — Miss Barton 
as a general purveyor for the sick and wounded — The battle of Fredericksburg — Under 
fire — The rebel officer's appeal — The " confiscated" carpet — After the battle— In the depart- 
ment of the South — The sands of Morris Island — The horrors of the siege of Forts ^Vagne^ 
and Sumter — The reason why she went thither — Return to the North — Preparations for 
the great campaign — Her labors at Belle Plain, Fredericksburg, White House, and City 
Point — Return to Washington — Appointed " General correspondent for the friends of pa- 
roled prisoners" — Her residence at Annapolis— Obstacles — The Annapolis plan abandoned — 
She establishes at Washington a "Bureau of records of missing men in the armies of the 
United States" — The plan of operations of this Bureau — Her visit to Andersonville — The 
case of Dorrance Atwater — The Bureau of missing men an institution indispensable to the 
Government and to friends of the soldiers — Iler sacrifices in maintaining it — The grant 
from Congress — Personal appearance of Miss Bai'ton 111-132 



HELEN LOUISE GILSON. 

Early history — Her first Avork for the soldiers — Collecting supplies — The clothing contract — 
Providing for soldiers' wives and daughters — Application to Miss Dix for an appointment as 
nm-se — She is rejected as too young — Associated with Hon. Frank B. Fay in the Auxi- 
liary Relief Service — Her labors on the Hospital Transports — Her manner of working — 
Her extraordinary personal influence — Her work at Gettysburg — Influence over the men — 
Carrying a sick comrade to the hospital — Her system and self-possession — Pleading the 
cause of the soldier with the people — Her services in Grant's protracted campaign — The 
hospitals at Fredericksburg — Singing to the soldiers — Her visit to the barge of " contra- 
bands" — Her address to the negroes—Singing to them — The hospital for colored soldiers — 
Miss Gilson re-organizes and re-models it, making it the best hospital at City Point — Her 
labors for the spiritual good of the men in her hospital — Her care for the negro washer- 
women and their families — Completion of her work — Personal appearance of Miss 
Gilson 133-148 



CONTEXTS. "27 



MRS. JOHN HARRIS. 

PAGK. 

Provioug history — Secretary Ladies' Aid Society — Her decision to go to tlie "front" — Early 
experiences — On the Hospital Transports — Harrison's Landing — Her garments soaked in 
human gore — Antietam — French's Division Hospital — Smoketown General Hospital — Re- 
turn to the '• front" — Fredericksburg — Falmouth — She almost despairs of the success of our 
arms — Chancellorsville — Gettysburg — Following the troops — Warreuton — Insolence of the 
rebels — Illness — Goes to the West — Chattanooga — Serious illness — Return to Nashville — 
Labors for the refugees — Called home to watch over a dying mother — The returned prison- 
ers from Andersonville and Salisbury 149-160 



MRS. ELIZA C. PORTER. 

Mrs. Porters social position— Her patriotism — Labors iu the hospitals at Cairo — She takes 
charge of the North wes;ern Sanitary Commission Rooms at Chicago — Her determination 
to go, with a corps of niirses, to the front — Cairo and Paducah — Visit to Pittsburg Landing 
after the battle — She brings nurses and supplies for the hospitals from Chicago — At 
Corinth— At Memphis— Work aniong the freedmen at Memphis and elsewhere— Efforts 
for the establishment of hospitals for the sick and wounded in the Northwest — Co-operation, 
wth Mrs. Harvey and Mrs. Howe — The Harvey Hospital — At Natchez and Vicksburg — 
Other appeals for Northern hospitals — At Huntsville with Mrs. Bickerdyke — At Chatta- 
nooga — Experiences in a field hospital in the woods — Following Sherman's army from 
Chattanooga to Atlanta — " This seems like having mother about" — Constant labors — The 
distribution of supplies to the soldiers of Sherman's army near Washington — A patriotic 
family 161-171 



MRS. MARY A. BICKERDYKE. 

Previous history of Mrs. Bickerdyke — Her regard for the private soldiers — " Mother Bicker- 
dyke and her boys" — Her work at Savannah after the battle of Shiloh — What she accom- 
plished at Perryville — The Gayoso Hospital at Memphis — Colored nurses and attendants — 
A model hospital — The delinquent assistant-surgeon — Mrs. Bickerdyke's philippic — She 
procures his dismissal — His interview with General Sherman — " She ranks me" — The com- 
manding generals appreciate her — Convalescent soldiers vs. colored nurses — The Mgdical 
Director's order — Mrs. Bickerdyke's triumph — A dairy and hennery for the hospitals — Two 
hundred cows and a thousand hens — Her first visit to the Milwaukee Chamber of Com- 
merce — "Go over to Canada — This country has no place for such creatures" — At Vicks- 
burg — In field hospitals— The dresses riddled with sparks — The box of clothing for her- 
self—Trading for butter and eggs for the soldiers — The two lace-trimmed night-dresses — A 
new style of hospital clothing for wounded soldiers — A second visit to Milwaukee — Mrs. 
Bickerdyke's speech — "Set your standard higher yet" — In the Huntsville Hospital — At 
Chattanooga at the close of the battle — The only woman on the ground for four weeks — 
Cooking under difficulties— Her interview with General Grant— Complaints of the neglect 
of the men by some of the siu'geons — " Go around to the hospitals and see for yourself" — 
Visits Huntsville, Pulaski, etc — With Sherman from Chattanooga to Atlanta — Making 
dishes for the sick out of hard tack and the ordinary rations— At Nashville and Franklin- 
Through the Carolinas with Sherman— Distribution of supplies near Washington— "The 
Freedmen's Home and Refuge" at Chicago 172-186 



28 CONTENTS. 

MARGARET ELIZABETH BRECKINRIDGE. By MvS. J. G. FoTinan. 

PAQS 

Sketch of her personal appearance — Her gentle, tender, winning ways — The American Florence 
Nightingale — What if I do die? — The Breckinridge family — Margaret's childhood and 
youth — Her emancipation of her slaves — Working for the soldiers early in the war — Not 
one of the Home Guards — Her earnest desii-e to labor in the hospitals — Hospital service at 
Baltimore — At Lexington, Kentucky — Morgan's first raid — Her visit to the wounded sol- 
diers — " Every one of you bring a regiment with you" — Visiting the St. Louis hospitals — 
On the hospital boats on the Mississippi — Perils of the voyage — Severe and incessant labor — 
The contrabands at Helena — Touching incidents of the wounded on the hospital boats — 
" The service pays" — In the hospitals at St. Louis — Impaired health — She goes eastward for 
rest and recovery — A year of weakness and weariness — In the hospital at Philadelphia — ^A 
ministering angel — Colonel Porter her brother-in-law killed at Cold Harbor — She goes to 
Baltimore to meet the body — Is seized with typhoid fever and dies after five weeks 
illness 187-199 

MRS. STEPHEN BARKER. 

Family of Mrs. Barker — Her husband Chaplain of First Massachusetts Heavy Artillery — She 
accompanies him to Washington — Devotes herself to the work of visiting the hospitals — 
Thanksgiving dinner in the hospital — She removes to Fort Albany and takes charge aa 
Matron of the Regimental Hospital — Pleasant experiences — Reading to the soldiers — Two 
years of labor — Return to Washington in January, 1864 — She becomes one of the hospital 
visitors of the Sanitary Commission — Ten hospitals a week — Remitting the soldiers' money 
and valuables to their families — The service of Mr. and Mrs. Barker as lecturers and mis- 
sionaries of the Sanitary Commission to the Aid Societies in the smaller cities and villages — 
The distribution of supplies to the disbanding armies — Her report 200-211 

AMY M. BRADLEY. 

Childhood of Miss Bradley — Her experiences as a teacher — Residence in Charleston, South 
Carolina — Two years of illness — Goes to Costa Rica — Three years of teaching in Central 
America — Return to the United States — Becomes corresponding clerk and translator in a 
large glass manufactory — Beginning of the war — She determines to go as a nurse — Writes 
to Dr. Palmer — His quaint reply — Her first experience as nurse in a regimental hospital — 
Skill and tact in managing it — Promoted by General Slocum to the charge of the Brigade 
Hospital — Hospital Transport Service — Over-exertion and need of rest — The organization 
of the Soldiers' Home at Washington — Visiting hospitals at her leisure — Camp Misery — 
Wretched condition of the men — The rendezvous of distribution — Miss Bradley goes thither 
as Sanitary Commission Agent — Her zealous and multifarious labors — Bringing in the dis- 
charged men for their papers — Procuring the correction of their papers, and the reinstate- 
ment of the men — " The Soldiers' Journal" — Miss Bradley's object in its establishment — Its 
success — Presents to Miss Bradley — Personal appearance 212-224 

MRS. ARABELLA GRIFFITH BARLOW. 

liirth and education of Mrs. Griffith — Her marriage at the beginning of the war — She accompa- 
nies her husband to the camp, and wherever it is possible ministers to the wounded or sick 
soldiers — Joins the Sanitary Commission in July, 1862, and labors among the sick and 
wounded at Harrison's Lauding till late in August — Colonel Barlow severely wounded at 
Autietam — Mrs. Barlow nurses him with great tenderness, and at the same time ministers 



COT>^TENTS. 29 

Pase 
to the w junded of Sedgwick Hospital — At Chancellorsville and Gettysburg— General Barlow 
again wounded, and in the enemy's lines — She removes him and siiccors the wounded in 
the intervals of her care of him — In May, 1864, she was actively engaged at Belle Plain, 
Fredericksburg, Port Royal, White House, and City Point — Her incessant labor brought on 
fever and caused her death July 27, 186-4 — Tribute of the Sanitary Commission Bulletin, 
Dr. Lieber and others, to her memory 225-23.3 

MRS. NELLIE MARIA TAYLOR. 

Parentage and early history — Removal to New Orleans — Her son urged to enlist in the rebel 
army — He is sent North — The rebels persecute Mrs. Taylor — Her dismissal from her posi- 
tion as principal of one of the city schools — Her house mobbed — " I am for the Union, tear 
my house down if you choose !" — Her house searched seven times for the flag — The Judge's 
son — " A piece of Southern chivalry" — Her son enlists in the rebel army to save her from 
molestation — New Orleans occupied by the Union forces — Mrs. Taylor reinstated as teacher — 
She nurses the soldiers in the hospitals, during her vacations and in all the leisure hours 
from her school duties, her daxighter filling up the intermediate time with her services — 
She expends her entire salary upon the sick and wounded — Writes eleven hundred and 
seventy-four letters for them in one year — Distributes the supplies received from the Cin- 
cinnati Branch of Sanitary Commission in 1864, and during the summer takes the manage- 
ment of the special diet of the University Hospital — Testimony of the soldiers to her 
labors — Patriotism and zeal of her children — Terms on which Miss Alice Taylor would pre- 
sent a confederate flag to a company 234-240 

MRS. ADA LINE TYLER. 

Residence in Boston — Removal to Baltimore — Becomes Superintendent of a Protestant Sister- 
hood in that city — Duties of the Sisterhood — The " Church Home" — Other duties of " Sister" 
Tyler — The opening of the war — The Baltimore mob — Wounding and killing members of 
the Sixth Massachusetts regiment — Mrs. Tyler hears that Massachusetts men are wounded 
and seeks admission to them — Is refused — She persists, and threatening an appeal to Gover- 
nor Andrew is finally admitted — She takes those most severely wounded to the " Church 
Home," procures surgical attendance for them, and nurses them till their recovery — Other 
Union wounded nursed by her — Receives the thanks of the Massachusetts Legislature and 
Governor — Is appointed Superintendent of the Camden Street Hospital, Baltimore — Resigns 
at the end of a year, and visits New York — The surgeon-general urges her to take charge of 
the large hospital at Chester, Pennsylvania — She remains at Chester till the hospital is 
broken up, when she is transferred to the First Division General Hospital, Naval Academy, 
Annapolis — The returned prisoners — Their terrible condition — Mrs. Tyler procures photo- 
graphs of them— Impaired health— Resignation — She visits Europe, and spends eighteen 
months there, advocating as she has opportunity the National cause — The fiendish rebel 
spirit — Incident relative to President Lincoln's assassination 241-250 

MRS. WILLIAM H. HOLSTEIN. 

Social position of Mr. and Mrs. Uolstein— Early labors for the soldiers at home — The battle of 
Antietam— She goes with her husband to care for the wounded— Her first emotions at the 
sight of the wounded— Three years' devotion to the service— Mr. and Mrs. Holstein devote 
themselves mainly to field hospitals— Labors at Fredericksburg, in the Second Corps Hos- 
pital — Services after the battle of Chancellorsville— The march toward Pennsylvania in 



30 conte:n^ts. 

PAGE 

June, 1863— The Field Hospital of the Second Corps after Gettysbug— Incidents— 
"Wouldn't be buried by the side of that raw recruit" — Mrs. Holstein Matron of the 
Second Corps Hospital — Tour among the Aid Societies — The campaign of 1864-5 — Constant 
labors in the field hospitals at Fredericksburg, City Point, and elsewhere, till November— 
Another tour among the Aid Societies — Labors among the returned prisoners at Anna- 
polis 251-259 

MRS. CORDELIA A. P. HARVEY. By Rev. N. M. Maiin. 

The death of her husband, Governor Louis P. Harvey — Her intense grief— She resolves to devot« 
herself to the care of tlie sick and wounded soldiers — She visits St. Louis as Agent for the 
State of Wisconsin — Work in the St. Louis hospitals in the autumn of 1862 — Heroic labors 
at Cape Girardeau — Visiting hospitals along the Mississippi — The soldiers' ideas of her 
influence and power — Young's Point in 1863 — Illness of Mrs. Harvey — She determines to 
secure the establishment of a General Hospital at Madison, Wisconsin, where from the fine 
climate the chances of recovery of the sick and wounded will be increased — Her resolution 
and energy— The Harvey Hospital — The removal of the patients at Fort Pickering to it — 
Repeated journeys down the Mississippi — Presented with an elegant watch by the Second 
Wisconsin Cavalry — Her influence over the soldiers — The Soldiers' Orphan Asylum at 
Madison 260-268 



MRS. SARAH R. JOHNSTON. 

Loyal Soutliern women — Mrs. Johnston's birth and social position — Her interest in the Union 
prisoners — " A Yankee syn)pathizer" — The young soldier — Her tender care of him, living 
and dead — ^Work for the prisoners — Her persecution by the rebels — " Why don't j'ou pin 
me to the earth as you threatened" — " Sergeant, you can't make anything on that woman" — 
Copying the inscriptions on Union graves, and statistics of Union prisoners — Her visit to 
the North 269-272 

EMILY E. PARSONS. By Bev. J. G. Forman. 

Her birth and education — Her preparation for ser-\ice in the hospitals — Receives instruction in 
the care of the sick, dressing wounds, preparation of diet, etc — Service at Fort Schuyler 
Hospital — Mrs. General Fremont secures her services for St. Louis — Condition of St. Louis 
and the other river cities at this time— First assigned to the Lawson Hospital — Next to 
Hospital steamer "City of Alton" — The voyage from Yicksburg to Memphis — Return to St. 
Louis — Illness — Appointed Superintendent of Nurses to the large Benton Barracks Hos- 
pital — Her duties — The admirable management of the hospital — Visit to the East — Return 
to her work— Illness and return to the East — Collects and forwards supplies to Western 
Sanitary Commission and Northwestern Sanitary Commission — The Chicago Fair — The 
Charity Hospital at Cambridse established by her — Her cheerfulness and skill in her hos- 
pital work 273- 27M 

MRS. ALMIRA FALES. 

The first woman to work for the soldiers — She commenced in December, 1860 — Her continuous 
service — Amount of stores distributed by her — Variety and severity of her work — Hospital 
Transport Service — Harrison's Landing — Her work in Pope's campaign — Death of her son — 
Her sorrowful toil at Fredericksburg and Falmouth — Her peculiarities and humor 279-283 



& 



(X)XTEXTS. 81 



CORNELIA HANCOCK. 

PAGE 
Early labors for the soldiers — Mr. Vassar's testimony — Gettysburg- Tlae campaign of 1864 — 
Fredericksburg and City Point 284-286 

MRS. MARY MORRIS HUSBAND. 

Her ancestry — Patriotic instincts of the family — Service in Philadelphia hospitals — Harrison's 
Landing — Nursing a sick son — Ministers to others there — Dr. Markland's testimony — At 
Camden Street Hospital, Baltimore — Antietam — Smoketown Hospital — Associated with 
Miss M. M. C. Hall — Her admirable services as nm'se there — Her personal appearance — 
The wonderful apron with its pockets — The battle-flag — Her heroism in contagious dis- 
ease — Attachment of the soldiers for her — Her energy and activity — Her adventures after 
the battle of Chancellorsville— The Field Hospital near United States Ford — The forgetful 
surgeon — Matron of Third Division, Third Corps Hospital, Gettysburg — Camp Letterman — 
Illness of Mrs. Husband — Stationed at Camp Parole, Annapolis — Hospital at Brandy Sta- 
tion — The battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania — Overwhelming labor at Fredericks- 
burg, Port Royal, White House, and City Point — Second Corps Hospital at City Point — 
Marching through llichmond — " Hm-rah for mother Husband" — The visit to her " boys" at 
Bailey's Cross Roads — Distribution of supplies — Mrs. Husband's labors for the pardon or 
commutation of the sentence of soldiers coudeiuiu-d by cmirt-niurtial — Her museum and its 
treasures 287-298 

THE HOSPITAL TRANSPORT SERVICE. 

The organization of this service by the United States Sanitary Commission — Difficulties en- 
countered — Steamers and sailing vessels employed — The corps of ladies employed in the 
service — The headquarters' staff— Ladies plying on the Transports to Washington, Balti- 
more, Philadelphia, New York, and elsewhere — Work on the Daniel Webster — The Ocean 
Queen — Difficulties in providing as rapidly as was desired for the numerous patients — Duties 
of the ladies who belonged to the headquarters' staff— Description of scenes in the work by 
Miss Wormeley and Miss G. Woolsey — Taking on patients — " Butter on soft bread" — " Guess 
I can stand h'isting better'n him" — " Spare the darning needles" — " Slippers only fit for 
pontoon bridges" — Visiting Government Transports — Scrambling eggs in a wash-basin — 
Subduing the captain of a tug — The battle of Fair Oaks — Bad management on Government 
Transports — Sufferings of the wounded — Sanitary Commission relief tent at the wharf — 
Relief tents at White House depot at Savage's Station — The departure from White House — 
Arrival at Harrison's Landiing — Running past the rebel batteries at City Point — " I'll take 
those mattresses you spoke of" — The wounded of the seven days' battles — "You are so 
kind, I — am so weak" — Exchanging prisoners under flag of truce ,.... 2J9-315 

OTHER LABORS OF SOME OF THE MEMBERS OF THE HOSPITAL 

TRANSPORT CORPS. 

Miss Bradley, Miss Gilson, Mrs. Husband, Miss Charlotte Bradford, Mrs. W. P. Griffin, Miss H. 
D. Whetten 316, 317 

KATHERINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY. 

Birth and parentage— Commencement of her labors for the soldiers— The Woman's Union Aid 
Society of Newport— She takes a contract for army clothing to furnish employment for 



32 CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

soldiers' families — Forwarding sanitary goods — The hundred and fifty bed sacks — Miss 
Wormeley's connection Avith the Hospital Transport Service — Iler extraordinary labors — 
Illness — Is appointed Lady Superintendent of the Lovell General Hospital at Portsmouth 
Grove, Rhode Island — Her duties — Resigns in October, 1863 — Her Tolurae — " The United 

Sanitary Commission" — Other labors for the soldiers - 318-323 



THE MISSES WOOLSEY. 

Social position of the Woolsey sisters — Mrs. Joseph Howland and her labors on the Hospital 
Transport — Her tender and skilful nursing of the sick and wounded of her husband's regi- 
ment — Poem addressed to her by a soldier — Her encouragement and assistance to the 
women nurses appointed by Miss Dix — Mrs. Robert S. Howland — Her labors in the hospitals 
and at the Metropolitan Sanitary Fair — Her early death from over-exertion in connection 
with the fair — Her poetical contributions to the National cause — "In the hospital" — Miss 
Georgiana M. Woolsey — Labors on Hospital Transports — At Portsmouth Grove Hospital — 
After Chancellorsville — Her work at Gettysburg \vith her mother — "Three weeks at Gettys- 
burg" — The approach to the battle-field — The Sanitary Commission's Lodge near the rail- 
road depot — The supply tent — Crutches — Supplying rebels and Union men alike — Dressing 
wounds — " On dress parade" — " Bread with butter on it and jelly on the butter" — " Worth a 
penny a sniff" — The Gettysburg women — The Gettysburg farmers — "Had never seen a 
rebel" — "A feller might' er got hit" — "I couldn't leave my bread" — The dying soldiers — 
" Tell her I love her" — The young rebel lieutenant — The colored freedmen — Praying for 
" Massa Lincoln" — The purple and blue and yellow handkerchiefs — " Only a blue one" — 
"The man who screamed so" — The German mother — The Oregon lieutenant — "Soup" — 
"Put some meat in a little water and stirred it round" — Miss Woolsey's rare capacities for 
her work — Estimate of a lady friend — Miss Jane Stuart Woolsey — Labors in hospitals — Her 
charge of the Freedmen at Richmond — Miss Sarah C. Woolsey, at Portsmouth Grove 
Hospital 324-342 



ANNA MAEIA ROSS. 

Her parentage and familj' — Early devotion to works of charity and benevolence — Praj'ing for 
success in soliciting aid for the unfortunate — The "black small-pox" — The conductoi-'s 
wife — The Cooper Shop Hospital — Her incessant labors and tender care of her patients — 
Her thoughtfulness for them when discharged — Her unselfish devotion to the good of 
others — Sending a soldier to his friends — " He must go or die" — The attachment of the sol- 
diei-8 to her — The home for discharged soldiers — Her efforts to provide the funds for it — Her 
success — The walk to South Street — Her sudden attack of paralysis and death — The monu- 
ment and its inscription 343-351 



MRS. G. T. M. DAVIS. 

frs. Davis a native of Pittsfield, Massachusetts — A patriotic family — General Bartlett — She be- 
comes Secretary of the Park Barracks Ladies' Association — The Bedloe's Island Hospital — 
The controversy — Discharge of the surgeon — Withdrawal from the Association — The hos- 
pital at David's Island — Mrs. Davis's labors there— The Soldiers' Rest on Howard Street — 
She becomes the Secretary of the Ladies' Association connected with it — Visits to other 
hospitals — Gratitude of the men to whom she has ministered — Appeals to the women of 
Berkshire — Her encomiums on their abundant laboi-s 352-356 



COXTEXTS. 38 



MARY J. SAFFORD. 

PAGi 

Miss SafiFord a native of Yerniont, but a resident of Cairo— Her thorougli and extensive mental 
culture — She organizes temporary hospitals among the regiments stationed at Cairo — Visit- 
ing the wounded on the field after the battle of Belmont — Her extemporized flag of truce — 
Her remarkable and excessive labors after the battle of Shiloh— On the Hospital steamers— 
Among the hospitals at Cairo—" A merry Christmas" for the soldiers stationed at Cairo — 
Hlness induced by her over-exertion — Her tour in Europe— Her labors there, while in feeble 
health— Mrs. Liverm.ore's sketch of Miss Safford— Her personal appearance und petite figure— 
" An angel at Cairo" — " That little gal that used to come in every day to see us— I tell 
you what she's an angel if there is any" 357-361 



MRS. LYDIA G. PARRISH. 

Previous history — Early consecration to the work of beneficence in the army — Visiting George- 
town Seminary Hospital — Seeks aid from the Sanitary Commission — Visits to camps around 
Washington — Return to Philadelphia to enlist the sj'mpathies of her friends in the work of 
the Commission — Return to Seminary Hospital — The surly soldier — He melts at last — Visits 
in other hospitals — Broad and Cherry Street Hospital, Philadelphia — Assists in organizing 
a Ladies' Aid Society at Chester, and in forming a corps of volunteer nurses — At Falmouth, 
Virginia, in January, 1863, with Mrs. Harris — On a tour of inspection in Virginia and North 
Carolina with her husband — The exchange of prisoners — Touching scenes — The Continental 
Fair — Mrs. Parrish's labors in connection Avith it — The tour of inspection at the Annapolis 
hospitals — Letters to the Sanitary Commission — Condition of the returned prisoners — Their 
hunger — The St. John's College Hospital — Admirable arrangement — Camp Parole Hospital — 
The Naval Academy Hospital — The landing of the prisoners — Their frightful sufferings — 
She compiles " The Soldiers' Friend" of which more than a hundred thousand copies were 
circulated — Her efi"orts for the freedmen 362-372 

MRS. ANNIE WITTENMEYER. 

Early efforts for the soldiers — She urges the organization of Aid Societies, and these become 
auxiliary at first to the Keokuk Aid Society, which she was active in establishing — The 
Iowa State Sanitary Commission — Mrs. Wittenmeyer becomes its agent — Her active efforts 
for the soldiers — She disburses one hundred and thirty-six thousand dollars worth of goods 
and supplies in about two years and a-half— She aids in the establishment of the Iowa 
Soldiers' Orphans' Home — Her plan of special diet kitchens— The Christian Commission 
appoint her their agent for carrying out this plan — Her labors in their establishment in 
connection with large hospitals — Special order of the War Department — The estimate of 
her services by the Christian Commission 373-378 



MELCENIA ELLIOTT. By Rev. J. G. Formaii. 

Previous pursuits— Tn the hospitals in Tennessee in the summer and autumn of 1862— A remark- 
ably skilful nurse— Services at Memphis— The Iowa soldier— She scales the fence to watch 
over him and minister to his needs, and at his death conveys his body to his friends, over- 
coming all difficulties to do so— In the Benton Barracks Hospital— Volunteers to nurse the 
patients in the erysipelas ward— Matron of the Refugee Home at St. Louis—" The poor 

white trash" — Matron of Soldiers' Orphans' Home at Farmington, Iowa 379-383 

5 



34 CONTENTS. 

MARY DWiGHT PETTES. By Eev. J. G. Formaii. 

PAGE 

A native of Boston— Came to St. Louis in 1861, and entered upon hospital work in January, 
1862 — Her faithful earnest Avork — Labors for the spiritual as well as physical welfare of the 
soldiers, reading the Scriptures to them, singing to them, etc.— Attachment of the soldiers 
to her— She is seized with typhoid fever contracted in her care for her patients, and dies 
after five weeks' illness — Dr. Eliofs impressions of her character , 384-388 

LOUISA MAERTZ. By Eev. J. G. Forman. 

Her birth and parentage — Her residence in Germany and Switzerland — Her fondness for study — 
Her extraordinary sympathy and benevolence — She commences visiting the hospitals in 
her native city, Quincy, Illinois, in the autumn of 1861 — She takes some of the wounded 
home to her father's house and ministers to them there — She goes to St. Louis— Is commis- 
sioned as a nurse — Sent to Helena, then full of wounded from the battles in Arkansas — Her 
severe labors here— Almost the only woman nurse in the hospitals there — " God bless you, 
dear lady" — The Arkansas Union soldier — The half-blind widow — Miss Maertz at Vicks- 
burg— At New Orleans 390-394 

MRS. HARRIET R. COLFAX. 

Early life — A widow and fatherless — Her first labors in the hospitals in St. Louis — Her sympa- 
thies never blunted — The siidden death of a soldier — Her religious labors among the pa- 
tients — Dr. Paddock's testimony — The wounded from Fort Donelson — On the hospital boat — 
In the battle at Island No. Ten — Bringing back the wounded — Mrs. Colfax's care of them — 
Trips to Pittsburg Landing, before and after the battle of Shiloh — Heavy and protracted 
labor for the nurses — Return to St. Louis — At the Fifth Street Hospital — At Jeff"erson Bar- 
racks — Her associates — Obliged to retire from the service on account of her health in 
1864 395-399 

CLARA DAVIS. 

Miss Davis not a native of this country — Her services at the Broad and Cherry Street Hospital, 
Philadelphia — One of the Hospital Transport corps — The steamer "John Brooks" — Mile 
Creek Hospital — Mrs. Husband's account of her — At Frederick City, Harper's Ferry, and 
Antietam— Agent of the Sanitary Commission at Camp Parole, Annapolis, Maryland — Is 
seized with typhoid fever here — When partially recovered, she resumes her labors, but is 
again attacked and compelled to Avithdraw from her work — Her other labors for the sol- 
diers, both sick and well — Obtaining furloughs — Sending home the bodies of dead soldiers — . 
Providing head-boards for the soldiers' graves ". 400-403 

MRS. R. H. SPENCER. 

Her home in Oswego, New York — Teaching — An anti-war Democrat is convinced of his duty 
to become a soldier, though too old for the draft — Husband and wife go together — At the 
Soldiers' Rest in Washington — Her first work — Matron of the hospital — At Wind-Mill 
Point — Matron in the First Corps Hospital — Foraging for the sick and wounded — The 
march toward Gettysburg — A heavily laden horse — Giving up her last blanket — Chivalric 
instincts of American soldiers — Labors during the battle of Gettysburg — Tinder fire — Field 
Hospital of the Eleventh Corps — The hospital at White Church — Incessant labors — Saving 
a soldier's life—" Can you go without food for a week ?"— The basin of broth- Mrs. Spencer 



CONTENTS. 35 

PAGE 

appointed agent of the State of New York for the care of the sick and wounded soldiers in 
the field — At Brandy Station — At Rappahannock Station and Belle Plain after the battle 
of the Wilderness — Virginia mud — Woi-king alone — Heavy rain and no shelter — Working 
on at Belle Plain — " Nothing to wear" — Port Royal — White House — Feeding the wounded — 
Arrives at City Point — The hospitals and the Government kitchen — At the front — Carrying 
supplies to the men in the rifle pits — Fired at by a sharpshooter — Shelled by the enemy — 
Tlie great explosion at City Point — Her narrow escape — Remains at City Point till the hos- 
pitals are broken up — The gifts received from grateful soldiers 40-t— H5 



MRS. HARRIET FOOTE HAWLEY. By Mrs. H. B. StOWe. 

Mrs. Hawley accompanies her husband, Colonel Hawley, to South Carolina — Teaching the freed- 
men — Yisiting the hospitals at Beaufort, Fernandina and St. Augustine — After Olustee — 
At the Armory Square Hospital, Washington — The surgical operations performed in the 
ward — " Reaching the hospital only in time to die" — At Wilmington — Frightful condition 
of Union prisoners — Typhus fever raging — The dangers greater than those of the battle- 
field — Four thousand sick — Mrs. Hawley's heroism, and incessant labors — At Richmond — 
Injured by the upsetting of an ambulance — Labors among the freedmen — Colonel Higgin- 
son's speech 41G-419 



ELLEN E. MITCHELL. 

Her family — Motives in entering on the work of ministering to the soldiers — Receives instruc- 
tions at Bellevue Hospital — Receives a nurse's pay and gives it to the suffering soldiers — 
At Elmore Hospital, Georgetown — Gratitude of the soldiers — Trials — St. Elizabeth's Hos- 
pital, Washington — A dying nurse — Her own serious illness — Care and attention of Miss 
Jessie Home — Death of her mother — At Point Lookout — Discomforts and suffering — Ware 
House Hospital, GeorgetoM'n — Transfer of patients and nurse to Union Hotel Hospital — 
Her duties arduous but pleasant — Transfer to Knight General Hospital, New Haven — Re- 
signs and accepts a situation in the Treasury Department, but longing for her old work 
returns to it — At Fredericksburg after battle of the Wilderness — At Judiciary Square Hos- 
pital, Washington — Abundant labor, but equally abundant happiness — Her feelings in the 
review of her work 420-426 



JESSIE HOME. 

A Scotch maiden, but devotedly attached to the Union — Abandons a pleasant and lucrative 
pursuit to become a hospital nurse — Her earnestness and zeal — Her incessant labors — 
Sickness and death— Cared for by Miss Bergen of Brooklyn, New York 427, 428 



MISS VANCE AND Miss BLACK MAR. By Mvs. M. M. Hushancl. 

Miss Vance a missionary teacher before the war— Appointed by Miss Dix to a Baltimore hos- 
pital—At Washington, at Alexandria, and at Gettysburg— At Fredericksburg after the 
battle of the Wilderness— At City Point in the Second Corps Hospital— Served through the 
whole war with but three weeks' furlough— Miss Blackmar from Michigan— A skilful and 
efficient nurse— The almost fatal hemorrhage— The boy saved by her skill— Carrying a hot 
brick to bed i'29, 430 



36 CONTENTS. 



H. A. DADA AND S. E. HALL. 

PAGS 
Missionary teachers before the war — Attending lectui'es to prepare ^or nursing — After the first 
battle of Bull Run— At Alexandria— The wounded from the battle-field— Incessant work — 
Ordered to Winchester, Virginia — The Court-House Hospital — At Strasburg — General 
Banks' retreat — Remaining among the enemy to care for the wounded — At Armory Square 
Hospital — The second Bull Run — Rapid but skilful care of the wounded— Painful cases — 
Harper's Ferry — Twelfth Army Corps Hospital — The mother in search of hnr son — After 
Chancellorsville— The battle of Gettysburg— Labors in the First' and Twelfth Corps Hos- 
pitals — Sent to Murfreesboro', Tennessee — Rudeness of the Medical Directors-Discomfort of 
their situation — Discourtesy of the Medical Director and some of the surgeons — " We have 
no ladies here — There are some women here, who are cooks !" — Removal to Chattanooga — 
Are courteously and kindly received — Wounded of Sherman's campaign — "You are the 
God-blessedest woman I ever saw" — Service to the close of the war and beyond — Lookout 
Mountain 431-439 



MRS. SARAH P. EDSON. 

Early life — Literary pursuits — In Columbia College Hospital — At Camp California — Quaker 
guns — Winchester, Virginia — Prevalence of gangrene — Union Hotel Hospital — On the 
Peninsula — In hospital of Sumner's Corps — Her son wounded — Transferred to Yorktown — 
Sufferings of the men — At White House and the front — Beef soup and coffee for starving 
wounded men — Is permitted to go to Harrison's Landing — Abundant labor and care — Chap- 
lain Fuller — At Hygeia Hospital — At Alexandria — Pope's campaign — Attempts to go to 
Antietam, but is detained by sickness — Goes to Warrenton, and accompanies the army 
thence to Acquia Creek — Return to Washington — Forms a society to establish a home and 
training school for nurses, and becomes its Secretary — Visits hospitals — State Relief Societies 
approve the plan — Sanitary Commission do not approve of it as a whole — Surgeon-General 
opposes — Visits New York city — The masons become interested — " Army Nurses' Associa- 
tion" formed in New York — Nurses in great numbers sent on after the battles of Wilder- 
ness, Spottsylvania, etc. — The experiment a success — Its eventual failure through the 
mismanagement in New York — Mrs. Edson continues her labors in the army to the close 
of the war — Enthusiastic reception by the soldiers 440-44" 



MARIA M. C. HALL. 

A native of Washington city — Desire to serve the sick and wounded — Receives a sick soldier 
into her father's house — Too young to answer the conditions required by Miss Dix — Appli- 
cation to Mrs. Fales — Attempts to dissuade her — "Well girls here theyare,Avith everything 
to be done for them" — The Indiana Hospital — Difficulties and discouragements — A year of 
hard and unsatisfactory work — Hospital Transport Service — The Daniel Webster — At Har- 
rison's Landing with Mrs. Fales — Condition of the poor fellows — Mrs. Harris calls her to 
Antietam — French's Division and Smoketown Hospitals — Abundant work but performed 
with great satisfaction — The French soldier's letter — The evening or family prayers — Suc- 
cessful efforts for the religious improvement of the men — Dr. Vanderkieft — The Naval 
Academy Hospital at Annapolis — In charge of Section five — Succeeds Mrs. Tyler as Lady 
Superintendent of the hospital — The humble condition of the returned prisoners from 
Andersonville and elsewhere — Prevalence of typhus fever — Death of her assistants — Four 
fliousand patients— Writes for " The Crutch"— Her joy in the success of her work 448-154 



CONTENTS. 37 



THE HOSPITAL CORPS AT THE NAVAL ACADEMY HOSPITAL, 
ANNAPOLIS. 

PAGE 

The cruelties which had been practiced on the Union men in rebel prisons — Duties of the nurses 
under Miss Hall — Names and homes of these ladies — Death of Miss Adeline Walker — Miss 
Hall's tribute to her memory — Miss Titcomb's eulogy on her — Death of Miss M. A. B. 
Young — Sketch of her history — " Let me be buried here among my boys" — Miss Rose M. 
Billing — Her faithfulness as a nurse in the Indiana Hospital, (Patent Office,) at Falls 
Church, and at Annapolis — She like the others falls a victim to the typhus generated in 
Southern prisons — Tribute to her memory 45.3-4:60 

OTHER LABORS OF SOME OF THE MEMBERS OF THE ANNAPOLIS 

HOSPITAL CORPS. 

The Maim stay of the Annapolis Hospital — Miss Titcomb — Miss Newhall — Miss Usher — Other 
ladies from Maine — The Maine camp and Hospital Association — Mrs. Eaton — Mrs. Fogg — 
Mrs. Mayhew — Miss Mary A. Dupee and her labors — Miss Abbie J. Howe — Her labors for 
the spiritual as well as phj'sical good of the men — Her great influence over them — Her joy 
in her work 461-466 

MRS. A. H. AND MISS S. H. GIBBONS. 

Sirs. Gibbons a daughter of Isaac T. Hopper — Her zeal in the cause of reform — Work of herself 
and daughter in the Patent Ofiice Hospital in 1861 — Visit to Falls Church and its hospital — 
Sad condition of the patients — "If you do not come and take care of me I shall die" — Re- 
turn to this hospital — Its condition greatly improved — Winchester and the Seminary Hos- 
pital — Severe labors here — Banks' retreat — The nurses held as prisoners — Losses of Mrs. 
and Miss Gibbons at this time — At Point Lookout — Exchanged prisoners from Belle Isle — 
A scarcity of garments — Trowsers a luxury — ^Fifteen months of hospital service — Conflicts 
with the authorities in regard to the freed men — The July riots in New York in 1863 — Mrs. 
Gibbons' house sacked by the rioters — Destruction of everything valuable — Return to Point 
Lookout — The campaign of 1864-5 — Mrs. and Miss Gibbons at Fredericksburg — An impro- 
vised hospital— Mrs. Gibbons takes charge — The gift of roses— The roses withered and dyed 
in the soldiers' blood — Riding with the wounded in box cars — At White House — Labors at 
Beverly Hospital, New Jersey — Mrs. Gibbous' return home — Her daughter remains till the 
close of the war 467-475 

MRS. E. J. RUSSELL. 

Government nurses— Their trials and hardships — Mrs. Russell a teacher before the war — Her 
patriotism— First connected with the Regimental Hospital of Twentieth New York Militia 
(National Guards)— Assigned to Columbia College Hospital, Washington— After three years' 
service resigns from impaired health, but recovering enters the service again in Baltimore — 
Nursing rebels — Her attention to the religious condition of the men — Four years of ser- 
vice—Returns to teaching after the war 477-479 

MRS. MARY W. LEE. 

Mrs. Lee of foreign birth, but American in feeling— Services in the Volunteer Refreshment 
Saloon — A noble institution— At Harrison's Landing, with Mrs. Harris — Wretched condition 
of the men— Improvement uuder the efforts of the ladies— The Hospital of the Epiphany 



38 CONTENTS. 



PA1E 
at "Washington — At Antietam during the battle — The two water tubs — '^le enterprising 
sutler — " Take this bread and give it to that woman" — The Sedgwick Hospital — Ordering 
a guard — Hoffman's Farm Hospital — Smoketown Hospital — Potomac Creek — Chancellors- 
ville — Under fire from the batteries on Fredericksburg Heights — Marching with the army — 
Gettysburg — The Second Corps Hospital — Camp Letterman — The Refreshment Saloon 
again — Brandy Station — A stove half a yard square — The battles of the Wilderness — At 
Fredericksburg — A diet kitchen without furniture — Over the river after a stove — Baking, 
boiling, stewing, and frying simultaneously — Keeping the old stove hot — At City Point — 
In charge of a hospital — The last days of the Refreshment Saloon 4:80-4S8 

CORNELIA M. TOMPKINS. By Rev. J. G. FoTinan. 

A scion of an eminent family — At Benton Barracks Hospital — At Memphis — Return to St. 

Louis— At Jefferson Barracks 489, 490 

MRS. ANNA c. McMEENS. Btj Mrs. E. S. Meiidenhall. 

A native of Maryland — The wife of a surgeon in the army — At Camp Dennison — One of the first 
women in Ohio to minister to the soldiers in a military hospital — At Nashville in hospital — 
The battle of Perry ville — Death of Dr. McMeens — At home — Laboring for the Sanitary 
Commission — In the hospitals at Washington — Missionary work among the sailors on Lake 
Erie 491,492 

MRS. JERUSHA R. SMALL. By Mrs. E. S. Mendenhall. 

A native of Iowa — Accompanies her husband to the war — Ministers to the wounded from Bel- 
mont, Donelson, and Shiloh — Her husband wounded at Shiloh — Under fire in ministering 
to the wounded — Uses all her spare clothing for them — As her husband recovers her own 
health fails — The galloping consumption — The female secessionist — Going home to die — 
Buried with the flag wrapped around her 493, 494 

MRS. s. A. MARTHA CANFiELD. By Mrs. E. S. Mendenhall. 

Wife of Colonel H. Canfield — Her hucband killed at Shiloh — Bm-j'ing her sorrows in her heart — 
She returns to labor for the wounded in the Sixteenth Army Corps, in the hospitals at 
Memphis — Labors among the freedmen — Establishes the Colored Orphan Asylum at 
Memphis 495 

MRS. THOMAS AND MISS MORRIS. 
Faithful laborers in the hospitals at Cincinnati till the close of the war 495 

MRS. SHEPARD WELLS. By Rev. J. G. Forman. 

Driven from East Tennessee by the rebels— Becomes a member of the Ladies' Union Aid So- 
ciety at St. Louis, and one of its Secretaries — Superintends the special diet kitchen at 
Benton Barracks — An enthusiastic and earnest worker — Labor for the refugees 497, 498 

MRS. E. c. wiTHERELL. By Rev. J. G. Forman. 

A lady from Louisville— Her service in the Fourth Street Hospital, St. Louis— " Shining 
Shore"— The soldier boy— On the " Empress" hospital steamer nursing the wounded— A 
faithful and untiring nurse — Is attacked Avith fever, and dies July, 1862 — Resolutions of 
Western Sanitary Commission 49^-501 



CONTENTS. 39 



PHEBE ALLEN. By Eev. J. G. Forman. 

PASK 

teacher iu Iowa — Volunteered as a nurse in Benton Barracks hospital — Very efficient — Died 
of malarious fever in 1864, at the hospital 502 



MRS. EDWIN GEEBLE. 

Of Quaker stock— Intensely patriotic— Her eldest son, Lieutenant John Greble, killed at Great 
Bethel in 1S61 — A second son served through the war -A son-in-law a prisoner in the rebel 
prisons — Mrs. Greble a most assiduous worker in the hospitals of Philadelphia, and a con- 
stant and liberal giver 503, 504 



MRS. ISABELLA FOGG. 

A resident of Calais, Maine — Her only son volunteers, and she devotes herself to the service of 
ministering to the wounded and sick — Goes to Annapolis with one of the Maine regiments — 
The spotted fever in the Annapolis Hospital — Mrs. Fogg and Mrs. Mayhew volunteer as 
nurses — The Hospital Transport Service — At the front after Fair Oaks — Savage's Station — 
Over land to Harrison's Landing with tho army — Under fire — On the hospital ship — Home — 
In the hospitals around Washington, after Antietam — The Maine Camp Hospital Associa- 
tion — Mrs. J. S, Eaton — After Chancellorsville — In the field hospitals for nearly a week, 
working day and night, and under fire — At Gettysburg the day after the battle — On the 
Rapidan — At Mine Run — At Belle Plain and Fredericksburg after the battle of the Wilder- 
ness — At City Point — Home again — A wounded son — Severe illness of Mrs. Fogg — Reco- 
very — Sent by Christian Commission to Louisville to take charge of a special diet kitchen — 
Injured by a fall — An invalid for life — Happy in the work accomplished 505-510 

MRS. E. E. GEORGE. 

Services of aged women in the war — Military agency of Indiana — Mi-s. George's appointment — 
Her services at Memphis — At Pulaski — At Chattanooga — Following Sherman to Atlanta — 
Matron of Fifteenth Army Corps Hospital — At Nashville — Starts for Savannah, but is per- 
suaded by Miss Dix to go to Wilmington — Excessive labors there — Dies of typhus 511-513 

MRS. CHARLOTTE E. MCKAY. 

A native of Massachusetts — Enters the service as nurse at Frederick city — Rebel occupation of 
the city — Chancellorsville — The assault on Marye's Heights — Death of her brother — Gettys- 
burg — Services in Third Division Third Corps Hospital — At Warrenton — Mine Run — Brandy 
Station — Grant's campaign — From Belle Plain to City Point — The Cavalry Corps Hospital — 
Testimonials presented to her 514-516 



MRS. FANNY L. RICKETTS. 

Of English parentage — Wife of Major-General Ricketts — Resides on the frontier for three years— 
Her husband wounded at Bull Run— Her heroism in going through the rebel lines to be 
with him— Dangers and privations at Richmond— Ministrations to Union soldiers— He is 
selected as a hostage for the privateersmen, but released at her urgent solicitation — 
Wounded again at Antietam, and again tenderly nursed— Wounded at Middletown, Vir- 
ginia, October, 1864, and for four months in great danger— The end of the war 517-5iy 



40 CONTENTS. 

\ 

MES. JOHN S. PHELPS. 

PAGE 

Early history — Eesid(!nce in the Southwest — Rescues General Lyon's body — Her heroism and 
benevolence at Pea Ridge and elsewhere 520, 521 

MRS. JANE R. MUNSELL. 

Maryland women in the war — Barbara Frietchie — EfBe Titlow — Mrs. Munsell's labors in the 
hospitals after Antietam and Gettysburg — Her death from over-exertion 522, 523 



PAET III. LADIES WHO OEGANIZED AID SOCIETIES, EECEIVED 
AND FORWAKDED SUPPLIES TO THE HOSPITALS, DEVOTING 
THEIE WHOLE TIME TO THE WORK, etc. 

woman's central association of RELIEF. By Mrs. Julia B. Curtis, 

Organization and officers of the Association — It becomes a branch of the United States Sanitary 
Commission — Its Registration Committee and their duties — The Selection and Preparation of 
Nurses for the Army — The Finance and Executive Committee — The unwillingness of the Gov- 
ernment to admit any deficiency — The arrival of the first boxes for the Association — The sacri- 
fices made by the women in the country towns and hamlets — The Committee of Correspond- 
ence — Twenty-five thousand letters — The receiving book, the day-book and the ledger — The 
alphabet repeated seven hundred and twenty-seven times on the boxes — Mrs. Fellows and Mrs. 
Colby solicitors of donations — The call for nurses on board the Hospital Transports— Mrs. 
W. P. GriiBn and Mrs. David Lane volunteer, and subsequently other members of the Asso- 
ciation — Mrs. D'Oremieulx's departure for Europe — Mr. S. W. Bridgham's faithful labors — 
Creeping into the Association rooms of a Sunday, to gather up and forward supplies 
needed for sudden emergencies — The First Council of Representatives from the principal 
Aid Societies at Washington — Monthly boxes — The Federal principle — Antietam and Fred- 
ericksburg exhaust the supplies — Miss Louisa Lee Schuyler's able letter of inquiry to the 
Secretaries of Auxiliaries — The plan of "Associate Managers" — Miss Schuyler's incessant 
labors in connection with this — The set of boxes devised by Miss Schuyler to aid the work 
of the Committee on Correspondence — The employment of Lecturers — The Association 
publish Mr. George T. Strong's pamphlet, " How can we best help our Camps and Hospi- 
tals" — The Hospital Directory opened — The lack of supplies of clothing and edibles, result- 
ing from the changed condition of the country — Activity and zeal of the members of the 
Woman's Central Association — Miss Ellen Collins' incessant labors— Her elaborate tables of 
supplies and their disbursement — The Association offers to purchase for the Auxiliaries at 
wholesale prices — Miss Schuyler's admirable Plan of Organization for Country Societies — 
Alert Clubs founded — Large contributions to the stations at Beaufort and Morris Island — 
Miss Collins and Mrs. W. P. Griifin in charge of the office through the New York Riots in 
July, 1863 — Mrs. Griffin, is chairman of Special Relief Committee, and makes personal 
visits to the sick — The Second Council at Washington — Miss Schuyler and Miss Collins dele- 
gates — Miss Schuyler's efforts — The whirlwind of Fairs — Aiding the feeble auxiliaries by 
donating an additional sum in goods equal to what they raised, to be manufactured by 
them — Five thousand dollars a month thus expended— A Soldiers' Aid Society Council- 
Help to Military Hospitals near the city, and the Navy, by the Association— Death of its 
President, Dr. Mott— The news of peace— Miss Collins' Congratulatory Letter— The Asso- 
ciation continues its work to July 7— Two hundred and ninety-one thousand four hundred 
and seventy-five shirts distributed — Purchases made for Auxiliaries, seventy-nine thou- 



CONTEXTS. 41 

PAGK 

sand three hundred and ninety dollars and fifty-seven cents — Other expenditures of money 
for the purposes of the Association, sixty-one thousand three hundred and eighty-six dollars 
and fifty-seven cents — The zeal of the Associated Managers — The Brooklyn Relief 
Association — Miss Schuyler's labors as a writer — Her reports — Articles in the Sanitary Bul- 
letin, " The Soldiers' Friend," " Nelly's Hospital," &c. &c. — The patient and continuous 
labors of the Committees on Correspondence and on Supplies — Territory occupied by the 
Woman's Central Association — Resolutions at the Final Meeting 527-539 

soldiers' aid society of northern OHIO. 

Its organization — At first a Local Society — No Written Constitution or By-laws — Becomes a 
branch of the United States Sanitary Commission in October, 1861 — Its territory small and 
not remarkable for wealth — Five hundred and twenty auxiliaries — Its disbursement of one 
million one hundred and thirty-three thousand dollars in money and suppli'es — The North- 
ern Ohio Sanitary Fair — The supplies mostly forwarded to the Western Depfit of the United 
States Sanitary Commission at Louisville — " The Soldiers' Home" built under the direction 
of the Ladies who managed the affairs of the Society, and supplied and conducted under 
their Supervision — The Hospital Directory, Employment Agency, War Claim Agency — The 
entire time of the Officers of the Society for five and a half years voluntarily and freely 
given to its work from eight in the morning till six or later in the evening — The President, 
Mrs. B. Rouse, and her labors in organizing Aid Societies and attending to the home work — 
The labors of the Secretary and Treasurer — Editorial work — The Society's printing press — 
Setting up and printing Bulletins — The Sanitary Fair originated and carried on by the Aid 
Society — The Ohio State Soldiers' Home aided by them — Sketch of Mrs. Rouse — Sketch of 
Miss Mary Clark Brayton, Secretary of the Society — Sketch of Miss Ellen F. Terry, Trea- 
surer of the Society — Miss Brayton's "On a Hospital Train," "Riding on a Rail" — Visit to 
the Army — The first sight of a hospital train — The wounded soldiers on board — " Trickling 
a little sympathy on the Wounded"—" The Hospital Train a jolly thing" — The dying 
soldier — Arrangement of the Hospital Train — The arduous duties of the Surgeon 540-552 

NEW ENGLAND WOMEN's AUXILIARY ASSOCIATION. 

Its organization and territory — One million five hundred and fifteen thousand dollars collected 
in money and supplies by this Association — Its Sanitary Fair and its results — Thechaii-mau 
of the Executive Committee Miss Abby W. May — Her retiring and modest disposition— Her 
rare executive powers — Sketch of Miss May — Her early zeal in the Anti-slavery move- 
ment — Her remarkable practical talent, and admirable management of affairs — Her elo- 
quent appeals to the auxiliaries — Her entire self-abnegation — Extract from one of her 
letters — Extract from her Final Report — The Boston Sewing Circle and its officers — The 
Ladies' Industrial Aid Association of Boston— Nearly three hundred and forty-seven thou- 
sand garments for the soldiers made by the employes of the Association, most of whom 
were from soldiers' families — Additional wages beyond the contract prices paid to the work- 
women, to the amount of over twenty thousand dollars — The lessons learned by the ladies 
engaged in this work 553-559 

THE NORTHWESTERN SANITARY COMMISSION. 

The origin of the Commission— Its early labors— Mrs. Porter's connection with it— Her determi- 
nation to go to the army — The appointment of Mrs. Hoge and Mrs. Livermore as Managers — 
The extent and variety of their labors— The two Sanitary Fairs — Estimate of the amount 
raised by the Commission 560, 561 



42 CONTENTS. 

MRS. A. H. HOGE. 

PAGE 
Her birth and early education— Her marriage— Her family— She identifies herself from the be- 
ginning with the National cause — Her first visit to the hospitals of Cairo, Mound City and 
St. Louis— The Mound City Hospital— The wounded boy— Turned over for the first time — 
" They had to take the Fort" — Rebel cruelties at Donelson — The poor French boy — The 
mother who had lost seven sons in the Army — " He had turned his face to the wall to 
die"— Mrs. Hoge at the Woman's Council at Washington in 1862 — Labors of Mrs. Hoge and 
Mrs. Livermore — Correspondence — Circulars — Addresses — Mrs. Hoge's eloquence and 
pathos— The ample contributions elicited by her appeals— Visit to the Camp of General 
Grant at Young's Point, in the winter of 1862-3 — Return with a cargo of wounded — Second 
visit to the vicinity of Vicksburg — Prevalence of scurvy — The onion and potato circulars — 
Third visit to Vicksburg in June, 1863— Incidents of this visit— The rifle-pits- 
Singing Hymns under fire — 'Did you drop from heaven into these rifle-pits ?" — Mrs. Hoge's 
talk to the men — " Promise me you'll visit my regiment to-morrow" — The flag of the Board 
of Trade Regiment — " How about the blood?" — " Sing, Rally i-ound the Flag Boys" — The 
death of R — " Take her picture from under my pillow" — Mrs. Hoge at Washington again — 
Her views of the value of the Press in benevolent operations — In the Sanitary Fairs at 
Chicago— Her address at Brooklyn, in March, 1865 — Gifts presented her as a testimony to 
the value of her labors 562-576 

MRS. MARY A. LIVERMORE. 

Mrs. Livermore's childhood and education — She becomes a teacher — Her marriage — She is asso- 
ciated with her husband as Editor of TJie New Covenant — Her scholarship and ability as a 
writer and speaker — The vigor and eloquence of her appeals — " Women and the War" — The 
beginnings of the Northwestern Sanitary Commission — The appointment of Mrs. Livermore 
and Mrs. Hoge as its managers — The contributions of Mrs. Livermore to the press, on sub- 
jects connected with her work — "The backward movement of General McClellan" — The 
Hutchinsons prohibited from singing Whittier's Song in the Army of the Potomac — Mrs. 
Livermore's visit to Washington — Her description of "Camp Misery" — She makes a tour 
to the Military Posts on the Mississippi — The female nurses — The scurvy in the Camp — 
The Northwestern Sanitary Fair — Mrs. Livermore's address to the Women of the North- 
west — Her tact in selecting the right persons to carry out her plans at the Fair — Her exten- 
sive journeyings — Her visit to Washington in the Spring of 1865 — Her invitation to the 
President to be present at the opening of the Fair — Her description of Mr. Lincoln — His 
death and the funeral solemnities with which his remains were received at Chicago — The 
final fair — Mrs. Livermore's testimonials of regard and appreciation from friends and, es- 
pecially from the soldiers 577-589 

GENERAL AID SOCIETY FOR THE ARMY, BUFFALO. 

Organization of the Society — Its first President, Mrs. Follett — Its second President, Mrs. Horatio 
Seymour — Her efficient Aids, Miss Babcock and Miss Bird — The friendly rivalry with the 
Cleveland Society — Mrs. Seymour's rare ability and system — Her encomiums on the labors 
of the patriot workers in country homes — The workers in the cities equally faithful and 
praiseworthy -590-592 

MICHIGAN soldiers' AID SOCIETY. 

The Patriotic women of Michigan — Annie Etheridge, Mrs. Russell and others — " The Soldiers' 
Relief Committee" and " The Soldiers' Aid Society" of Detroit— Their Consolidation— Tho 



CONTENTS. 4d 

PAGE 

officers of the New Society — Miss Valeria Campbell the soul of the organization — Her mul- 
tifarious labors — The Military Hospitals in Detroit — The " Soldiers' Home" in Detroit — 
Michigan in the two Chicago Fairs— Amount of money and supplies raised by the Michigan 
Branch 593-595 



WOMEN S PENNSYLVANIA BRANCH OF UNITED STATES SANITARY 

COMMISSION. 

The loyal women of Philadelphia — Their numerous organizations for the relief of the Soldier — 
The organization of the Women's Pennsylvania Branch — Its officers — Sketch of Mrs. 
Grier — Her parentage — Her residence in Wilmington, N. C. — Persecution for loyalty — 
Escape — She enters immediately upon Hospital Work — Her appointment to the Presidency 
of the Women's Branch — Her remarkable tact and skill — Her extraordinary executive 
talent — Mrs. Clara J. Moore — Sketch of her labors — Other ladies of the Association — Testi- 
monials to Mrs. Grier's ability and admirable management from officers of the Sanitary 
Commission and others — The final report of this Branch — The condition of the state and 
country at its inception — The Associate Managers — The work accomplished — Peace at last — 
The details of Expenses of the Supply Department — The work of the Relief Committee — 
Eight hundred and thirty women employed — Widows of Soldiers aided — Total expenditures 
of Belief Committee 596-606 

THE WISCONSIN soLDiERs' AID SOCIETY. By Eev. J. G. Foruiau. 

The Mihvaukie Ladies Soldiers' Aid Society — Labors of Mrs. Jackson, Mrs. Delafield and others — 
Enlargement and re-organization as the Wisconsin Soldiers' Aid Society — Mrs. Henrietta L. 
Colt, chosen Corresponding Secretary — Her visits to the front, and her subsequent labors 
among the Aid Societies of the State — •'Efficiency of the Society — The Wisconsin Soldiers' 
Home — Its extent and what it accomplished — It forms the Nucleus of one of the National 
Soldiers' Homes — Sketch of Mrs. Colt — Death of her husband — Her deep and overwhelm- 
ing grief — She enters upon the Sanitary Work, to relieve herself from the crushing weight 
of her great sorrow — Her labors on a Hospital Steamer — Her frequent subsequent visits to 
the front — Her own account of these visits — " The beardless boys, all heroes" — Sketch of 
Mrs. Governor Salomon — Her labors in behalf of the German and other soldiers of Wis- 
consin 607-614 

PITTSBURG BRANCH UNITED STATES SANITARY COMMISSION. 

The Pittsburg Sanitary Committee and Pittsburg Subsistence Committee — Organization of the 
Branch — Its Corresponding Secretary, Miss Rachael W. McFadden — Her executive ability 
zeal and patriotism — Her colleagues in her labors — The Pittsburg Sanitary Fair — Its re- 
markable success— Miss Murdock's labors at Nashville 615,616 

MRS. ELIZABETH S. MENDENHALL. 

Mrs. Mendenhall's childhood and youth passed in Richmond, Va.— Her relatives Members of the 
Society of Friends— Her early Hospital labors— President of the Women's Soldiers' Aid 
Society of Cincinnati— Her appeal to the citizens of Cincinnati to organize a Sanitary Fair— 
Her efforts to make the Fair a success— The magnificent result— Subsequent labors in the 
Sanitary Cause— Fair for Soldiers' Families in December, 1864— Labors for the Freedmen 
and Refugees — In behalf of fallen women 617-620 



44 CONTENTS. 

DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH. 

PAGE 
Dr. M. M. Marsh appointed Medical Inspector of Department of the South — Early in 1863 he 
proceeded thither with his wife — Mrs. Marsh finds abundant work in the receipt and distri- 
bution of Sanitary Stores, in the visiting of Hospitals— Spirit of the wounded men — The 
exchange of prisoners — Sufferings of our men in Rebel prisons — Their self-sacrificing 
spirit — Supplies sent to the prisoners, and letters received from them — The sudden suspen- 
sion of this benevolent work by order from General Halleck — The sick from Sherman's 
Army — Dr. Marsh ordered to Newbern, N. C, but detained by sickness — Return to New 
York — The " Lincoln Home" — Dr. and Mrs. Marsh's labors there — Close of the Lincoln 
Home 621-629 

ST. LOUIS ladies' UNION AID SOCIETY. 

Organization of the Society — Itsoflicers — Was the principal Auxiliary of Western Sanitary Com- 
mission — Visits of its members to the fourteen hospitals in the vicinity of St. Louis — The 
hospital basket and its contents — The Society's delegates on the battle-fields — Employs the 
wives and daughters of soldiers in bandage rolling, and subsequently on contracts for hos- 
pital and other clothing for soldiers — Its committees cutting, fitting and examining the 
work — Undertakes the special diet kitchen of the Benton Barracks Hospital — Establishes a 
branch at Nashville — Special Diet Kitchen there — Its work for the Freedmen and Refu- 
gees — Sketches of its leading ofiBcers and managers — Mrs. Anna L. Clapp, a native of Wash- 
ington County, N. Y — Resides in Brooklyn, N. Y., and subsequently in St. Louis — Elected 
President of Ladies' Union Aid Society at the beginning of the war, and retains her position 
till its close — Her arduous labors and great tact and skill — She organizes a Refugee Homo 
and House of Industry — Aids the Freedmen, and assists in the proper regulation of the 
Soldiers' Home — Miss H. A. Adams, (now Mrs. Morris Collins) — Born and educated in New 
Hampshire — At the outbreak of the war, a teacher in St. Louis — Devoted herself to the 
Sanitary work throughout the war — Was secretary of the society till the close of 1864, and 
a part of the time at Nashville, where she established a special diet kitchen — Death of her 
brother in the army — Her influence in procuring the admission of female nurses in the 
Nashville hospitals — Mrs. C. R. Springer, a native of Maine, one of the directors of the 
Society, and the superintendent of its employment department, for furnishing work to 
soldiers' families — Her unremitting and faithful labors — Mrs. Mary E. Palmer— A native of 
New Jersey — An earnest worker, visiting and aiding soldiers' families and dispensing the 
charities of the Society among them and the destitute families of refugees — Her labors were 
greater than her strength — Her death occasioned by a decline, the result of over exertion in 
her philanthropic work 630-642 

ladies' AID SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA, &C. 

Organization of the Society — Its officers — Mrs. Joel Jones, Mrs. John Harris, Mrs. Stephen 
Caldwell — Mrs. Harris mostly engaged at the front — The Society organized with a view to 
the spiritual as well as physical benefit of the soldiers — Its great efficiency with moderate 
means — The ladies who distributed its supplies at the front — Extract from one of its re- 
ports — Its labors among the Refugees — The self-sacrifice of one of its members — Its expen- 
ditures. The Penn Relief Association — An organization originating with the Friends, but 
afterward embracing all denominations — Its ofiicers — Its efficiency — Amount of supplies 
distributed by it through well-known ladies. The Soldiers' Aid Society — Another of the 
eflftcient Pennsylvania Organizations for the relief of the soldiers — Its President, Mrs. Mary 



CONTENTS. 45 

PAGE 

A. Brady — Her labors in the Satterlee Hospital — At " Camp Misery" — At the front — After 
Gettysburg, and at Mine Run — Her health injured by her exposure and excessive labors — 
She dies of heart-disease in May, 1864 643-649 

women's relief association of BROOKLYN AND LONG ISLAND, 

Brooklyn early in the war — Numerous channels for distribution of the Supplies contributed— 
Importance of a Single Comprehensive Organization — The Relief Association formed — Mr. 
Stranahan chosen President — Sketch of Mrs. Stranahan — Her social position — First directress 
of the Graham Institute — Her rare tact and efficiency as a presiding officer and in the dis- 
patch of business — The Long Island Sanitary Fair — Her excessive labors there, and the 
perfect harmony and good feeling which prevailed — Rev. Dr. Spear's statement of her 
worth — The resolutions of the Relief Association — Rev. Dr. Bellows' Testimony — Her death- 
Rev. Dr. Farley's letter concerning her — Rev. Dr. Budington's tribute to her memory.. 650-658 

MRS. ELIZABETH M. STREETER. 

Loyal Southern Women — Mrs. Streeter's activity in promoting associations of loyal women for 
the relief of the soldiers — Her New England parentage and education — The Ladies' Union 
Relief Association of Baltimore — Mrs. Streeter at Antietam — As a Hospital Visitor — The 
Eutaw Street Hospital — The Union Refugees in Baltimore — Mi's. Streeter organizes the 
Ladies' Union Aid Society for the Relief of Soldiers' families — Testimony of the Alaryland 
Committee of the Christian Commission to the value of her labors — Death of her husband — 
Her return to Massachusetts 659-664 

MRS. CURTIS T. FENN. 

The loyal record of the men and women of Berkshire County — Mrs. Fenn's history and position 
before the war — Her skill and tenderness in the care of the sick — Her readiness to enter 
upon the work of relief— She becomes the embodiment of a Relief Association — Liberal 
contributions made and much work performed by others but no organization — Mrs. Fenn's 
incessant and extraordinary labors for the soldiers — Her packing and shipping of the sup- 
plies to the hospitals in and about New York and to more distant cities — Refreshments for 
Soldiers who passed through Pittsiield — Her personal distribution of supplies at the soldiers' 
Thanksgiving dinner at Bedloe's Island in 1862, and at David's Island in 1864 — "The gen- 
tleman from Africa and liis vote" — Her efforts for the disabled soldiers and their families — 
The soldiers' monument ,, 665-675 



MRS. JAMES HARLAN. 

Women in high stations devoting themselves to the relief of the Soldiers — Instances — Mrs. 
Harlan's early interest in the soldier — At Shiloh — Cutting red-tape— Wounded soldiers re- 
moved northward after the battle— Death of her daughter— Her labors for the religious 
benefit of the soldier— Her health impaired by her labors 676-678 

NEW ENGLAND SOLDIERS' RELIEF ASSOCIATION. 

History of the organization— Its Matron, Mrs. E. A. Russell— The Women's Auxiliary Commit- 
tee—The Night Watchers' Association— The Hospital Choir— The Soldiers' Depot in How- 
ard Street, N. Y— The Ladies' Association connected withit 679,686 



46 CONTENTS. 

PAET IV. LADIES DISTINGUISHED FOE SEEVICES AMONG THE 
FEEEDMEN AND EEFUGEES. 

MRS. FRANCES DANA GAGE. 

PAGE 

Childhood and youth of Mrs. Gage — Anti-slavery views inculcated by her parents and grand- 
parents — Her marriage — Her husband an earnest reformer — Her connection with the press — 
Ostracism on account of her opposition to slavery — Propositions made to her husband to 
swerve from principle and thereby attain office — " Dare to stand alone" — Removal to St. 
Louis — A contributor to the Missouri Republican — The noble stand of Colonel Chambers — 
His death — She contributes to the Missouri Democrat, but is finally excluded from its 
columns — Personal peril — Her advocacy of the cause of Kansas — Editor of an Agricultiu-al 
paper in Columbus, Ohio — Her labors among the freedmen in the department of the South 
for thirteen months, (1862-3) — Helps the soldiers also — Her four sons in the army — Return 
Northward in the Autumn of 1863 — Becomes a lecturer — Advocating the Emancipation Act 
and the Constitutional Amendment, prohibiting slavery — Labors for the Freedmen and 
Refugees in 1864 — Is injured ])y the overturning of a carriage at Galesburg,Ill.,in Septem- 
ber, 1864 — Lecturing again on her partial recovery — Summary of her character 683-690 

MRS. LUCY GAYLORD ROMERO Y. 

Birth and early education — Half-sister of the poets Lewis and Willis Gaylord Clark — Educates 
herself for a Missionary — A Sunday-school teacher — Sorrow — Is married to S. C. Pomeroy 
(afterward United States Senator from Kansas) — Residence in Southampton, Mass. — 111 
health — Removal to Kansas — The Kansas Struggle and Border Ruffian War — Mrs. Pome- 
roy a firm friend to the escaping slaves — The famine year of 1860 — Her house an office of 
distribution for supplies to the starving — Accompanies her husband to Washington in 1861 — 
Her labors and contributions for the soldiers — In Washington and at Atchison, Kansas — Re- 
turn to Washington — Founding an asylum for colored orphans and destitute aged colored 
women — The building obtained and furnished — Her failing health — She comes north, but 
dies on the passage 691-696 



MARIA R. MAKN. 

Miss Mann a near relative of the late Hon. Horace Mann — Her career as a teacher — Her 
loyalty— Comes to St. Louis— Becomes a nurse in the Fifth St. Hospital — Condition of the 
Freedmen at St. Helena, Ark. — The Western Sanitary Commission becomes interested in en- 
deavoring to help them — They propose to Miss Mann to go thither and establish a hospital, 
distribute clothing and supplies to them, and instruct them as far as possible — She con- 
sents — Perilous voyage — Her great and beneficent labors at Helena — Extraordinary improve- 
ment in the condition of the freedmen — She remains till August, 1863 — Her heroism — 
Gratitude of the freedmen— "You's light as a fedder, anyhow" — Return to St. Louis — Be- 
comes the teacher and manager of a colored asylum at Washington, D. C. — Her school for 
colored children at Georgetown — ^Its superior character — It is, in intention, a normal school — 
Miss Mann's sacrifices in continuing in that position 097- 



SARAH J. IIAGAR. 

A native of Illinois— Serves in the St. Louis Hospitals till August, 1863— Is sent to Vicksburg 
in the autumn of 1863, by the Western Sanitary Commission, as teacher for the Freedmeu's 



CONTENTS. 47 

PAGE 

children — Her great and successful laliors — Is attacked in April. 1864, with malarial fever, 
and dies May 3 — Tribute to her character and work, from Mr. Marsh, superintendent of 
Freedmen at Vicksburg 704-706 

MRS. JOSEPHINE R. GRIFFIN. 

Her noble efforts — Her position at the commencement of the Avar — Her interest in the condi- 
tion of the Freedmen — Her attempts to overcome their faults — Her success — Organization 
of schools — Finding employment for them — Influx of Freedmen into the District of Colum- 
bia — Their helpless condition — Mrs. GriflSn attempts to find situations for them at the 
North — Extensive correspondence — Her expeditions with companies of them to the North- 
ern cities — Necessities of the freedmen remaining in the District in the Autumn of 1865 — 
Mrs. GriflBn's circular — The denial of its truth bj' the Freedmen's Bureau — Their subsequent 
retraction — The Congressional appropriation — Should have been put in Mrs. Griffin's hands — 
She continues her labors 707-709 

MRS. M. M. HALLOWELL. 

('ondition of the loyal whites of the mountainous district of the South — Their suflFerings and 
persecutions — Cruelty of the Rebels — Contributions for their aid in the north — Boston, New 
York, Philadelphia — Mrs. Ilallowell's efforts — She and her associates visit Nashville. Knox- 
ville, Huntsville and Chattanooga and distribute supplies to the families of refugees — Peril 
of their journey — Repeated visits of Mrs. Hallowell — The Home for Refugees, near Nash- 
ville — Gratitude of the Refugees for tbis aid— Colonel Taylor's letter 710-712 

OTHER FRIENDS OF THE FREEDMEN AND REFUGEES. 

Mrs. Harris' labors — Miss Tyson and Mrs. Beck — Miss Jane Stuart Woolsey — Mrs. Governor 
Hawley — Miss Gilson — Mrs. Lucy S. Starr — Mrs. Clinton B. Fisk — Mrs. 11. F. Hoes and Miss 
Alice F. Royce — Mrs. John S. Phelps — Mrs. Mary A. Whitaker — Fort Leavenworth— Mrs. 
Nettie C. Constant — Miss G. D. Chapman — Miss Sarah E. M. Lovejoy, daughter of Hon. 
Owen Lovejoy — Miss Mary E. Sheffield — Her labors at Vicksburg — Her death — Helena — Mrs. 
Sarah Coombs — Nashville — Mrs. Mary R. Fogg — St. Louis Refugee and Freedmen's Home — 
Mrs. H. M. Weed — The supervision of this Home by Mrs. Alfred Clapp, Mrs. Joseph Craw- 
shaw, Mrs. Lucien Eaton and Mrs. N. Stevens 713-716 



PAET V. LADIES DISTINGUISHED FOE SERVICES IN SOLDIERS' 
HOMES, VOLUNTEER REFRESHMENT SALOONS, ON GOVERN- 
MENT HOSPITAL TRANSPORTS ETC. 

MRS. O. E. HOSMER. 

Mrs. Ilosmer's residence at Chicago — Her two sons enter the army — She determines to go to the 
hospitals— Her first experiences in the hospitals at Tipton and Smithtown— The lack of sup- 
plies—Mrs. Hosmer procures them from the Sanitary Commission at St. Louis— Return to 
Chicago— Organization of the " Ladies' War Committee"- Mrs. Hosmer its Secretary— Effi- 
ciency of the organization— The Board of Trade Regiments— Mrs. Hosmer and Mrs. Smith 
Tinkham go to Murfreesboro' with supplies after the battle of Stone River— Their report on 
their return— Touching incident— The wounded soldier— Return to Chicago— Establishment 
of the Soldiers' Home at Chicago— Mrs. Hosmer its first Vice President— Her zeal foi' its 
interests and devotion to the Soldiers there— To the battle-field after Chickamauga— Taken 



48 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

prisoner but recaptured — Supplies lost — xleturn home — Her labors at the Soldiers' Home 
and Soldiers' Rest for the next fifteen months — The Northwestern Sanitary and Soldiers' 
Home Tair — Mrs. Hosmer Corresponding Secretary of the Executive Committee — She visits 
the hospitals from Cairo to New Orleans — Success of her Mission — The emaciated prisoners 
from Andersonville and Catawba at Yicksburg — Mrs. Hosmer ministers to them — The loss 
of the Sultana — Return and further labors at the Soldiers' Rest — Removal to New York. 719-724 



MISS HATTIE WISWALL. 

Enters the service as Hospital Nurse in 1863 — At Benton Barracks Hospital — A Model nurse — 
Her cheerfulness — Removal to Nashville, Tennessee — She is sent thence to Vicksburg, first 
as an assistant and afterwards as principal matron at the Soldiers' Home — One hundred and 
fifteen thousand soldiers accommodated there during her stay — ^The number of soldiers daily 
received ranging from two hundred to six hundred — Her admirable management — Scrupu- 
lous neatness of the Home — Her labors among the Freedmen and Refugees at Vicksburg — 
Her care of the wounded from the Red River Expedition — Her tenderness and cheerful 
spirit — She accompanies a hospital steamer loaded Avith wounded men, to Cairo, and cheers 
and comforts the soldiers on their voyage — Takes charge of a wounded oflBcer and conducts 
him to his home — Return to her duties — The Soldiers' Home discontinued in June, 1865. 725- 



MRS. LUCY E. STARR. 

A Clergyman's widow — Her service in the Fifth Street Hospital, St. Louis — Her admirable adap- 
tation to her duties — Appointed by the "Western Sanitary Commission, Matron of the 
Soldiers' Home at Memphis — Nearly one hundred and twenty thousand soldiers received 
there during two and a half years — ^Mrs. Starr manages the Home with great fidelity 
and success — Mr. 0. R. Waters' acknowledgment of her services — Closing of the Home — 
Mrs. Starr takes charge of an institution for suffering freedmen and refugees, in Memphis — 
Her faithfulness 728-7! 



MISS CHARLOTTE BRADFORD. 

Her reticence in regard to her labors — The public and ofiicial life of ladies occupying positions 
in charitable institutions properly a matter of public comment and notice — Miss Bradford's 
labors in the Hospital Transport Service — The Elm City — The Knickerbocker — Her asso- 
ciates in this work — Other Relief Work — She succeeds Miss Bradley as matron of the 
Soldiers' Home at Washington — Her remarkable executive ability, dignity and tenderness 
for the sick and wounded soldier 731,732 



UNION VOLUNTEER REFRESHMENT SALOON OF PHILADELPHIA. 

The labors of Mrs. Lee and Miss Ross in institutions of this class — The beginning of the Union 
Yolunteer Refreshment Saloon — Rival but not hostile organization — Samuel B. Fales, Esq., 
and his patriotic labors — The two institutions well supplied with funds — Nearly nine hun- 
dred thousand soldiers fed at the Union Volunteer Refreshment Saloon, and four hundred 
thousand at the Cooper Shop — The labors of the patriotic women connected with the or- 
ganizations — Mrs. Eliza G. Plummer — Her faithful and abundant labors — Her death from 
over exertion — Mrs. Mary B. Wade — Her great age, and extraordinary services — Mrs. Ellen 
J. Lowry — Mrs. Margaret Boyer — Other ladies and their constant and valuable labors — The 
worthy ladies of the Cooper Shop Saloon 733-737 



CONTENTS. 49 



MRS. E. M. BIGELOW. 

PAOK 

"Aunty Bigelow" — Mrs. Bigelow a native of Washington — Her services in the Indiana Hospital 
in the Patent Office Building — "Hot cakes and mush and milk" — Mrs. Billing an associate 
m Mrs. Bigelow's Labors — Mrs. Bigelow the almoner of many of the Aid Societies at the 
North — Her skill and judgment in the distribution of supplies— She maintains a regular 
correspondence with the soldier boys who have been uijder her care — Her house a " Home" 
for the sick soldier or oflBcer who asked that he might be sheltered and nur«ied there — She 
welcomes with open doors the hospital workers from abroad — Her personal sorrows vp 
the midst of these labors 738-740 

MISS HATTIE R. SHARPLESS AND HER ASSOCIATES. 

The Government Hospital Transports early in the M'ar — Great improvements made in them at a 
later period — The Government Transport Connecticut — Miss Sharpless serves as matron on 
this for seventeen months — His previous labors in army hospitals at Fredericksburg, Falls 
Church, Antietam and elsewhere — Her admirable adaptation to her work — A true Chris- 
tian heroine — Thirty-three thousand sick and wounded men under charge on the Trans- 
port — Her religious influence on the men — Miss Hattie S. Reifsnyder of Cataviissa, Penn. 
and Mrs. Cynthia Case of Newark, Ohio, her assistants are actuated by a si lilar spirit — Miss 
W. F. Harris of Providence, R. I., also,on the Transport, for some months, and previously in 
the Indiana Hospital, in Ascension Church and Carver Hospital, and after leaving the Trans- 
port at Harper's Ferry and Winchester — Her health much broken by her excessive labors — 
Devotes herself to the instruction and training of the Freedmen after the close of the 
war 741-743 



PAET VI. LADIES DISTINGUISHED FOE OTHEK SEEVICES IN 
THE NATIONAL CAUSE. 

MRS. ANNIE ETHERIDGE. -^ 

Mrs. Etheridge's goodness and purity of character — Her childhood and girlhood passed in Wis- 
consin — She marries there — Return of her father to Michigan — She visits him and while 
there joins the Second Michigan Regiment, to attend to its sick and wounded — Transferred 
subsequently to the Third Regiment, and at the expiration of its term of service joins the 
Fifth Michigan Regiment — She is in the skirmish of Blackburn's Ford and at the first bat- 
tle of Bull Run — In hospital service — On a hospital transport with Miss Amy M. Bradley — 
At the second battle of Bull Run — The soldier boy torn to pieces by a shot while she is 
ministering to him — General Kearny's recognition of her services — Kearny's death prevents 
her receiving promotion — At Chaucellorsville, May 3, 1863 — She leads in a skirmish, rides 
along the front exhorting the men to do their duty, and finds herself under heavy fire — 
An ofiicer killed by her side and she herself slightly wounded — Her horse, wounded, runs 
with her — She seeks General Berry and after a pleasant interview takes charge of a 
rebel officer, a prisoner, whom she escorts to the rear — " I would risk my life for Annie, any 
time" — General Berry's death— The wounded artillery-man— She binds up his wounds and 
has him brought to the hospital— Touching letter— The retreating soldiers at Spottsylva- 
nia — Annie remonstrates with them, and brings them back into the fight, under heavy 
fire — Outside the lines, and closely pursued by the enemy — Hatcher's Run — She dashes 
through the enemy's line unhurt— She receives a Government appointment at the close of 
the war— Her modesty and diffidence of demeanor 747-753 

■ 7 



50 COKTENTS. 



DELPHINE P. BAKER. 

PAGS 

Her birth and education — Character of her parents — Her lectures on the sphere and culture of 
women — Her labors in Chicago in the collection and distribution of hospital supplies — 
Her hospital work — 111 health — She commences the publication of " The National Banner" 
first in Chicago, next in Washington and finally in New York — Its success but partial — Her 
efforts long, persistent and unwearied, for the establishment of a National Home for 
Soldiers — The bill finallj'^ passes Congress — Delay in organization — Its cause — Miss Baker 
meantime endeavors to procure Point Lookout as a location for one of the National Soldiers' 
Homes — Change in the act of incorporation — The purchase of the Point Lookout property 
consummated 754-759 



MRS. S. BURGER STEARNS. 

A native of New York City — Her education at the State Normal School of Michigan — Her 
marriage — Her husband a Colonel of volunteers — She visits the hospitals and devotes her- 
self to lecturing in behalf of the Aid movement 760 



BARBARA FRIETCHIE. 
Her age— Her patriotism— Whittier's poem 761-763 

MRS. HETTIE M. McEWEN. 

Of revolutionary lineage — Her devotion to the Union — Her defiance of Isham Harris' eiforts to 

have the Union fiag lowered on her house— Mrs. Hooper's poem 764-766 

I 

OTHER DEFENDERS OF THE FLAG. 

Mrs. Eflfie Titlow — Mrs. Alfred Clapp — Mrs. Moore (Parson Brownlow's daughter) — Miss Alice 
Taylor — Mrs. Booth — ^^ Never surrender the flag to traitors." 767-769 

MILITARY HEROINES. 

Those who donned the male attire not entitled to a place in our pages — Madame Turchin — Her 
exploits — Bridget Divers — " Michigan Bridget" or " Irish Biddy" — She recovers her captain's 
body, and carries it on her horse for fifteen miles through rebel territory — Returns after 
the wounded, but is overtaken by the rebels while bringing them off and plundered of her 
ambulance horses — Others soon after provided — Accompanies a regiment of the regular 
army to the plains after the war — Mrs. Kady Brownell — Her skill as a sharp-shooter, and in 
sword exercise — Color Bearer in the Fifth Rhode Island Infantry — A skillful nurse — Her 
husband wounded — Discharged from the army in 186-3 770-774 

THE WOMEN OF GETTYSBURG. 

Mrs. Jennie Wade — Her loyalty and courage — Her death during the battle — Miss Carrie Sheads, 
Principal of Oak Ridge Seminary — Her preservation of Colonel Wheelock's sword — Her labors 
in the care of the wounded — Her health impaired thereby — Miss Amelia Harmon — Her 
patriotism and courage — ' Burn the house if you willl" 775-7T8 



CONTENTS. 51 



LOYAL WOMEN OF THE SOUTH. 

PAGE 
Names of loyal Southern Women already mentioned — The loyal women of Richmond — Their 
abundant labors for Union prisoners — Loyal women of Charleston — The Union League — Food 
and clothing furnished — Loyalty and heroism of some of the negro women — Loyal women 
of New Orleans — The names of some of the most prominent — Loyal women of the moun- 
tainous districts of the south — Their ready aid to our escaping prisoners— Miss Melvina 
Stevens — Malignity of some of the Rebel women — Heroism of Loyal women in East Tennes- 
see, Northern Georgia and Alabama 779-782 

MISS HETTY A. JONES. By Horatio G. Jones, Esq. 

Miss Jones' birth and lineage — She aids in equipping the companies of Union soldiers organized 
in her own neighborhood — Her services in the Filbert Street Hospital — Death of her 
brother — Visit to Fortress Monroe — She determines to go to the front and attaches herself 
to the Third Division, Second Corps, Hospital at City Point — Has an attack of Pleurisy — On 
her recovery resumes her labors — Is again attacked and dies on the 21st of December, 1864 — 
Her happy death — Mourning of the convalescent soldiers of the Filbert Street Hospital 
over her death 783-786 



FINAL CHAPTEE. 

THE FAITHFUL BUT LESS CONSPICUOUS LABOEERS. 

The many necessarily unnamed — Ladies who served at Antietam, Point Lookout, City Point or 
Naval Academy Hospital, Annapolis — The faithful workers at Benton Barracks Hospital, St. 
Louis — Miss Lovell, Miss Bissell, Mrs. Tannehil], Mrs. R. S. Smith, Mrs. Gray, Miss Lane, 
Miss Adams, Miss Spaulding, Miss King, Mrs. Day — Other nurses of great merit appointed 
by the Western Sanitary Commission — Volunteer visitors in the St. Louis Hospitals — Ladies 
who ministered to the soldiers in Quincy, and in Springfield, Illinois — Miss Georgiana Wil- 
lets, Misses Molineux and McCabe — Ladies of Cincinnati who served in the hospitals — Mrs. 
C. J. Wright, Mrs. Starbuck, Mrs. Gibson, Mrs. Woods and Mrs. Caldwell — Miss E. L. Porter 
of Niagara Falls — Boston ladies — Mrs. and Miss Anna Lowell, Mrs. 0. W. Holmes, Miss 
Stevenson, Mrs. S. Loriug, Mrs. Shaw, Mrs. Brimmer, Miss Rogers, Miss Felton. — Louisville, 
Ky. — Mrs. Bishop Smith and Mrs. Menefee — Columbus, Ohio — Mrs. Hoyle, Mrs. Ide, Miss 
Swayne — Mrs. Seward of Utica — Mrs. Corven, of Hartford, Conn— Miss Long, of Rochester — 
Mrs. Farr, of Norwalk, Ohio — Miss Bartlett, of the Soldiers' Aid Society, Peoria, 111 — Mrs. Rus- 
sell and Mrs. Comstock, of Michigan, Mrs. Dame, of Wisconsin— Miss Bucklin, of Auburn, 
N. Y. — Miss Louise M. Alcott, of Concord, Mass. — Miss Penfield, of Michigan — The Misses 
Rexford of Illinois — Miss Sophia Knight, of South Reading, Mass., a faithful laborer among 
the Freedraen 787-794 

INDEX OF NAMES OF LADIES 795-800 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

1.— MISS CLARA H. BARTON Frontispiecb. 

2.— BARBARA FRIETCHIE Vignette Title. 

3.— MRS. MARY A. BICKERDYKE 172 

4.— MISS MARGARET E. BRECKENRIDGE 187 

5.— MRS. NELLIE MARIA TAYLOR .' 234 

6.— MRS. CORDELIA A. P. HARVEY 260 

7.— MISS EMILY E. PARSONS 273 

8.— MRS. MARY MORRIS HUSBAND 287 

9.— MISS MARY J. SAFFORD 357 

10.— MRS. R. H. SPENCER 404 

11.— MISS HATTIE A. DADA 431 

12.— MRS. MARIANNE F. STRANAHAN 536 

13.— MRS. MARY A. LIVERMORE 577 

14.— MRS. HENRIETTA L. COLT 60. 

15.— MRS. MARY B. WADE 736 

16.— ANNIE ETHERIDGE ...„ 747 

53 



INTRODUCTION 



A RECORD of the personal services of our American women in tlie late 
Civil War, however painful to the modesty of those whom it brings con- 
spicuously before the world, is due to the honor of the country, to the 
proper understanding of our social life, and to the general interests of a sex 
whose rights, duties and capacities are now under serious discussion. Most 
of the women commemorated in this work inevitably lost the benefits of 
privacy, by the largeness and length of their public services, and their 
names and history are to a certain extent the property of the country. At 
any rate they must suffer the penalty which conspicuous merit entails upon 
its possessors, especially when won in fields of universal interest. 

Notwithstanding the pains taken to collect from all parts of the country, 
the names and history of the women who in any way distinguished them- 
selves in the War, and in spite of the utmost impartiality of purpose, there 
is no pretence that all who served the country best, are named in this 
record. Doubtless thousands of women, obscure in their homes, and hum- 
ble in their fortunes, without official position even in their local society, and 
all human trace of whose labors is forever lost, contributed as generously 
of their substance, and as freely of their time and strength, and gave as 
unreservedly their hearts and their prayers to the cause, as the most con- 
spicuous on the shining list here unrolled. For if 

" The world knows nothing of its greatest men," 

it is still more true of its noblest women. Unrewarded by praise, unsullied 
by self-eomplacency, there is a character "of no reputation," which formed 
in strictest retirement, and in the patient exercise of unobserved sacrifices, 
is dearer and holier in the eye of Heaven, than the most illustrious name 
won by the most splendid services. Women there were in this war, who 
without a single relative in the army, denied themselves for the whole four 

65 



56 INTEODUCTION". 

years, the comforts to whicli they had been always accustomed ; went thinly 
clad, took the extra blanket from their bed, never tasted tea, or sugar, or 
flesh, that they might wind another bandage round some unknown soldier's 
wound, or give some parched lips in the hospital another sip of wine. 
Others never let one leisure moment, saved from lives of pledged labor 
which barely earned their bread, go unemployed in the service of the 
soldiers. Grod Himself keeps this record ! It is too sacred to be trusted to 
men. 

But it is not such humble, yet exalted souls that will complain of the 
praise which to their neglect, is allotted to any of their sisters. The ranks 
always contain some heroes braver and better than the most fortunate and 
conspicuous officers of staff or line —but they feel themselves best praised 
when their regiment, theii' corps, or their general is ^gazetted. And the 
true-hearted workers for the soldiers among the women of this country will 
gladly accept the recognition given to the noble band of their sisters whom 
peculiar circumstances lifted into distinct view, as a tribute offered to the 
whole company. Indeed, if the lives set forth in this work, were regarded 
as exceptional in their temper and spirit, as they certainly were in their 
incidents and largeness of sphere, the whole lesson of the Record would be 
misread. These women in their sacrifices, their patriotism, and their per- 
sistency, are only fair representatives of the spirit of their whole sex. As 
a rule, American women exhibited not only an intense feeling for the sol- 
diers in their exposures and their sufferings, but an intelligent sympathy 
with the national cause, equal to that which furnished among the men, two 
million and three hundred thousand volunteers. 

It is not unusual for women of all countries to weep and to work for those 
who encounter the perils of war. But the American women, after giving 
up, with a principled alacrity, to the ranks of the gathering and advancing 
army, their husbands and sons, their brothers and lovers, proceeded to 
organize relief for them; and they did it, not in the spasmodic and senti- 
mental way, which has been common elsewhere, but with a self-controlled 
and rational consideration of the wisest and best means of accomplishing 
their purpose, which showed them to be in some degree the products and 
representatives of a new social era, and a new political development. 

The distinctive features in woman's work in this war, were magnitude, 
system, thorough co-operativeness with the other sex, distinctness of pur- 
pose, business-like thoroughness in details, sturdy persistency to the close. 
There was no more general rising among the men, than among the women. 
Men did not take to the musket, more commonly than women took to the 
needle; and for every assembly where men met for mutual excitation in the 



INTEODUCTION. 57 

service of the country, there was some corresponding gathering of women, 
to stir each other's hearts and fingers in the same sacred cause. All the 
caucuses and political assemblies of every kind, in which speech and song 
quickened the blood of the men, did not exceed in number the meetings, 
in the form of Soldiers' Aid Societies, and Sewing Circles, which the 
women held, where they talked over the national cause, and fed the fires 
of sacrifice in each other's hearts. Probably never in any war in any coun- 
try, was there so universal and so specific an acquaintance on the part of 
both men and women, with the principles at issue, and the interests at 
stake. And of the two, the women were clearer and more united than the 
men, because their moral feelings and political instincts were not so much 
afiected by selfishness and business, or party considerations. The work 
which our system of popular education does for girls and boys ahke, and 
which in the middle and upper classes practically goes further with girls 
than with boys, told magnificently at this crisis. Everywhere, well edu- 
cated women were found fully able to understand and explain to their 
sisters, the public questions involved in the war. Everywhere the news- 
papers, crowded with interest and with discussions, found eager and appre- 
ciative readers among the gentler sex. Everywhere started up women 
acquainted with the order of public business ; able to call, and preside over 
public meetings of their own sex ; act as secretaries and committees, draft 
constitutions and bye-laws, open books, and keep accounts with adequate 
precision*, appreciate system, and postpone private inclinations or prefer- 
ences to general principles; enter into extensive correspondence with their 
own sex: co-operate in the largest and most rational plans proposed by men 
who had studied carefully the subject of soldiers' relief, and adhere through 
good report and through evil report, to organizations which commended 
themselves to their judgment, in spite of local,' sectarian, or personal jeal- 
ousies and detractions. 

It is impossible to over-estimate the amount of consecrated work done by 
the loyal women of the North for the Army. Hundreds of thousands of 
women probably gave all the leisure they could command, and all the money 
they could s^ave and spare, to the soldiers for the whole four years and more, 
of the War. Amid discouragements and fearful delays they never flagged, 
but to the last increased in zeal and devotion. And their work was as sys- 
tematic as it was universal. A generous emulation among the Branches of 
the United States Sanitary Commission, managed generally by women, 
usually, however, with some aid from men, brought their business habits 
and methods to an almost perfect finish. Nothing that men commonly 
think peculiar to their own methods was wanting in the plans of the women. 



58 INTRODUCTION. 

They acknowledged and answered, endorsed and filed their letters; they 
sorted their stores, and kept an accurate account of stock ; they had their 
books and reports kept in the most approved forms ; they balanced their 
cash accounts with the most pains-taking precision ; they exacted of each 
other regularity of attendance and punctihousness of official etiquette. 
They showed in short, a perfect aptitude for business, and proved by their 
own experience that men can devise nothing too precise, too systematic or 
too complicated for women to understand, apply and improve upon, where 
there is any sufficient motive for it. 

It was another feature of the case that there was no jealousy between 
women and men in the work, and no disposition to discourage, underrate, 
or dissociate from each other. It seemed to be conceded that men had 
more invention, comprehensiveness and power of generalization, and that 
their business habits, the fruits of ages of experience, were at least worth 
studying and copying by women. On the other hand, men, usually jealous 
of woman's extending the sphere of her life and labors, welcomed in this 
case her assistance in a public work, and felt how vain men's toil and sac- 
rifices would be without woman's steady sympathy and patient ministry of 
mercy, her more delicate and persistent pity, her willingness to endure mo- 
notonous details of labor for the sake of charity, her power to open the 
heart of her husband, and to keep alive and flowing the fountains of com- 
passion and love. 

No words are adequate to describe the systematic, persistent faithfulness 
of the women who organized and led the Branches of the United States 
Sanitary Commission. Their volunteer labor had all the regularity of paid 
service, and a heartiness and earnestness which no paid services can ever 
have. Hundreds of women evinced talents there, which, in other spheres 
and in the other sex, would have made them merchant-princes, or great 
administrators of public afi"airs. Storms nor heats could keep them from 
their posts, and they wore on their faces, and finally evinced in their break- 
ing constitutions, the marks of the cruel strain put upon their minds and 
hearts. They engaged in a correspondence of the most trying kind, requir- 
ing the utmost address to meet the searching questions asked by intelligent 
jealousy, and to answer the rigorous objections raised by impatience or ig- 
norance in the rural districts. They became instructors of whole townships 
in the methods of government business, the constitution of the Commissary 
and Quartermaster's Departments, and the forms of the Medical Bureau. 
They had steadily to contend with the natural desire of the Aid Societies 
for local independeB ce, and to reconcile neighborhoods to the idea of being 
merged and lost in large generalizations. They kept up the spirit of the 



i:n-teoduction. 69 

people distant from the war and the camps, by a steady fire of lette rs full of 
touching incidents ; and they were repaid not only by the most generous 
returns of stores, but by letters from humble homes and lonely hearts, so 
full of truth and tenderness, of wisdom and pity, of self-sacrifice and patri- 
otic consecration, that the most gifted and educated women in America, 
many of them at the head of the Branches or among their Directors, felt 
constantly reproved by the nobleness, the sweetness, the depth of sentiment 
that welled from the hidden and obscure springs in the hearts of farmers' 
wives and factory-girls. 

Nor were the talents and the sacrifices of those at the larger Depots or 
Centres, more worthy of notice than the skill and pains evinced in arous- 
ing, maintaining and managing the zeal and work of county or town socie- 
ties. Indeed, sometimes larger works are more readily controlled than 
smaller ones ; and jealousies and individual caprices obstruct the co-opera- 
tion of villages more than of towns and cities. 

In the ten thousand Soldiers' Aid Societies which at one time or another 
probably existed in the country, there was in each some master-spirit, whose 
consecrated purpose was the staple in the wall, from which the chain of 
service hung and on whose strength and firmness it steadily drew. I never 
visited a single town however obscure, that I did not hear some woman's 
name which stood in that community for ' 'Army Service ; " a name round 
which the rest of the women gladly rallied ; the name of some woman 
whose heart was felt to beat louder and more firmly than any of the rest for 
the boys in blue. 

Of the practical talent, the personal worth, the aptitude for public ser- 
vice, the love of self-sacrificing duty thus developed and nursed into power, 
and brought to the knowledge of its possessors and their communities, it is 
difficult to speak too warmly. Thousands of women learned in this work 
to despise frivolity, gossip, fashion and idleness; learned to think soberly 
and without prejudice of the capacities of their own sex ; and thus, did 
more to advance the rights of woman by proving her gifts and her fitness 
for public duties, than a whole library of arguments and protests. 

The prodigious exertions put forth by the women who founded and con- 
ducted the great Fairs for the soldiers in a dozen principal cities, and in 
many large towns, were only surpassed by the planning skill and adminis- 
trative ability which accompanied their progress, and the marvellous success 
in which they terminated. Months of anxious preparation, where hun- 
dreds of committees vied with each other in long-headed schemes for secur- 
ing the co-operation of the several trades or industries allotted to each, and 
during which laborious days and anxious nights were unintermittingly given 



60 INTRODUCTION. 

to the wearing work, were followed by weeks of personal service in the fairs 
themselves, where the strongest women found their vigor inadequate to the 
task, and hundreds laid the foundations of long illness and some of sudden 
death. These sacrifices and far-seeing provisions were justly repaid by al- 
most fabulous returns of money, which to the extent of nearly three mil- 
lions of dollars, flowed into the treasury of the United States Sanitary 
Commission. The chief women who inaugurated the several great Fairs at 
New Yorkj Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, 
and administered these vast movements, were not behind the ablest men in 
the land in their grasp and comprehension -of the business in hand, and 
often in comparison with the men associated with them, exhibited a finer 
scope, a better spirit and a more victorious faith. But for the women of 
America, the great Fairs would never have been born, or would have died 
ignominiously in their gilded cradles. Their vastness of conception and 
their splendid results are to be set as an everlasting crown on woman's ca- 
pacity for large and money-yielding enterprises. The women who led them 
can never sink back into obscurity. 

But I must pass from this inviting theme, where indeed I feel more at 
home than in what is to follow, to the consideration of what naturally occu- 
pies a larger space in this work — however much smaller it was in reality, 
I. e. , to the labors of the women who actually went to the war, and worked 
in the hospitals and camps. 

Of the labors of women in the hospitals and in the field, this book gives 
a far fuller history than is likely to be got from any other source, as this 
sort of service cannot be recorded in the histories of organized work. For, 
far the largest part of this work was done by persons of exceptional energy 
and some fine natural aptitude for the service, which was independent of 
organizations, and hardly submitted itself to any rules except the impulses 
of devoted love for the work — supplying tact, patience and resources. The 
women who did hospital service continuously, or who kept themselves near 
the base of armies in the field, or who moved among the camps, and trav- 
elled with the corps, were an exceptional class — as rare as heroines always 
are — a class, representing no social grade, but coming from all — belonging 
to no rank or age of life in particular ; sometimes young and sometimes 
old, sometimes refined and sometimes rude ; now of fragile physical aspect 
and then of extraordinary robustness— but in all cases, women with a 
mighty love and earnestness in their hearts — a love and pity, and an ability 
to show it forth and to labor in behalf of it, equal to that which in other 
departments of life, distinguishes poets, philosophers, sages and saints, 
from ordinary or average men. 



INTKODUCTIOIS^. 61 

• 
Moved by an indomitable desire to serve in person tlie victims of wounds 
and sickness, a few hundred women, impelled by instincts which assured 
them of their ability to endure the hardship, overcome the obstacles, and 
adjust themselves to the unusual and unfeminine circumstances in which 
they would be placed — made their way through all obstructions at home, 
and at the seat of war, or in the hospitals, to the bed-sides of the sick and 
wounded men. Many of these women scandahzed their frien(Js at home 
by what seemed their Quixotic resolution ; or, they left their families under 
circumstances which involved a romantic oblivion of the recognized and 
usual duties of domestic life; they forsook their own children, to make 
children of a whole army corps ; they risked their lives in fevered hospitals ; 
they lived in tents or slept in ambulance wagons, for months together ; they 
fell sick of fevers themselves, and after long illness, returned to the eld 
business of hospital and field service. They carried into their work their 
womanly tenderness, their copious sympathies, their great-hearted devo- 
tion — and had to face and contend with the cold routine, the semi-savage 
professional indifference, which by the necessities of the case, makes ordi- 
nary medical supervision, in time of actual war, impersonal, official, unsym- 
pathetic and abrupt. The honest, natural jealousy felt by surgeons-in- 
charge, and their ward masters, of all outside assistance, made it necessary 
for every woman, who was to succeed in her purpose of holding her place, 
and really serving the men, to study and practice an address, an adaptation 
and a patience, of which not one candidate in ten was capable. Doubtless 
nine-tenths of all who wished to oiFer and thought themselves capable of 
this service, failed in their practical efforts. As many women fancied them- 
selves capable of enduring hospital life, as there are always in every college, 
youth who believe they can become distinguished authors, poets and states- 
men. But only the few who had a genius for the work, continued in it, and 
succeeded in elbowing room for themselves through the never-ending 
obstacles, jealousies and chagrins that beset the service. Every woman 
who keeps her place in a general hospital, or a corps hospital, has to prove 
her title to be trusted ; her tact, discretion, endurance and strength of nerve 
and fibre. No one woman succeeded in rendering years of hospital service, 
who was not an exceptional person — a woman of larger heart, clearer head, 
finer enthusiasm, and more mingled tact, courage, firmness and holy will— 
than one in a thousand of her sex. A grander collection of women — 
whether considered in their intellectual or their moral qualities, their heads 
or their hearts, I have not had the happiness of knowing, than the women 
I saw in the hospitals ; they were the flower of their sex. Grreat as were 
the labors ofHhosB who superintended the operations at home- -of collecting 



62 INTRODUCTION. 

and preparing supplies for the hospitals and the field, I cannot but think 
that the women who lived in the hospitals, or among the soldiers, required a 
force of character and a glow of devotion and self-sacrifice, of a rarer kind. 
They were really heroines. They conquered their feminine sensibility at 
the sight of blood and wounds ; their native antipathy to disorder, confu- 
sion and violence ; subdued the rebellious delicacy of their more exquisite 
senses; lived coarsely, and dressed and slept rudely; they studied the 
caprices of men to whom their ties were simply human — men often igno- 
rant, feeble-minded — out of their senses — raving with pain and fever; they 
had a still harder service to bear with the pride, the official arrogance, the 
hardness or the folly — perhaps the impertinence and presumption of half- 
trained medical men, whom the urgencies of the case had fastened on the 
service.* Their position was always critical, equivocal, suspected, and to 
be justified only by their undeniable and conspicuous merits ; — their wisdom, 
patience and proven efficiency ; justified by the love and reverence they ex- 
acted from the soldiers themselves ! 

True, the rewards of these women were equal to their sacrifices. They 
drew their pay from a richer treasury than that of the United States Gov- 
ernment. I never knew one of them who had had a long service, whose 
memory of the grateful looks of the dying, of the few awkward words that 
fell from the lips of thankful convalescents, or the speechless eye-following 
of the dependent soldier, or the pressure of a rough hand, softened to 
womanly gentleness by long illness, — was not the sweetest treasure of all 
their lives. Nothing in the power of the Nation to give or to say, can ever 
compare for a moment with the proud satisfaction which every brave 
soldier who risked his life for his country, always carries in his heart of 
hearts. And no public recognition, no thanks from a saved Nation, can 
ever add anything of much importance to the rewards of those who tasted 
the actual joy of ministering with their own hands and hearts to the wants 
of one sick and dying man. 

It remains only to saj?- a word about the influence of the work of the 
women in the War upon the strength and unanimity of the public senti- 
ment, and on the courage and fortitude of the army itself 

The participation by actual work and service in the labors of the War, 



* A large number of the United States Army and volunteer surgeons were in- 
deed men of the highest and most humane character, and treated the women who 
came to the hospitals, with careful and scrupulous consideration. Some women 
were able to say that they never encountered opposition or hindrance from any 
officials: but this was not the rule. 



INTEODUCTION. 63 

not only took out of women's hearts the soreness which unemployed ener- 
gies or incongruous pursuits would have left there, but it took out of their 
mouths the murmurs and moans which their deserted, husbandless, childless 
condition would so naturally have provoked. The women by their call to 
work, and the opportunity of pouring their energies, sympathies and affec- 
tions into an ever open and practical channel, were quieted, reconciled, 
upheld. The weak were borne upon the bosoms of the strong. Banded 
together, and working together, their sohcitude and uneasiness were alle- 
viated. Following in imagination the work of their own hands, they seemed 
to be present on the field and in the ranks ; they studied the course of the 
armies; they watched the policy of the Grovernment ; they learned the 
character of the Generals ; they threw themselves into the war ! And so 
they helped wonderfully to keep up the enthusiasm, or to rebuke the luke- 
warmness, or to check the despondency and apathy which at times settled 
over the people. Men were ashamed to doubt where women trusted, or to 
murmur where they submitted, or to do little where they did so much. If 
during the war, home life had gone on as usual ; women engrossed in their 
domestic or social cares ; shrinking from public questions ; deferring to what 
their husbands or brothers told them, or seeking to amuse themselves with 
social pleasures and striving to forget the painful strife in frivolous caprices, 
it would have had a fearful effect on public sentiment, deepening the gloom 
of every reverse, adding to the discouragements which an embarrassed 
commerce and trade brought to men's hearts, by domestic echoes of weari- 
ness of the strife, and favoring the growth of a disaffected, compromising, 
unpatriotic feeling, which always stood ready to break out with any offered 
encouragement. A sense of nearness of the people to the Grovernment 
which the organization of the women effected, enlarged their sympathies 
with its movements and disposed them to patience. Their own direct ex- 
perience of the difficulties of all co-operative undertakings, broadened their 
views and rendered intelligible the delays and reverses which our national 
cause suffered. In short the women of the country were through the whole 
conflict, not only not softening the fibres of war, but they were actually 
strengthening its sinews by keeping up their own courage and that of their 
households, under the inspiration of the larger and more public life, the 
broader work and greater field for enterprise and self-sacrifice afforded them 
by their direct labors for the benefit of the soldie s. They drew thousands of 
lukewarm, or calculating, or self-saving men into the support of the national 
cause by their practical enthusiasm and devotion. They proved what has 
again and again been demonstrated, that what the women of a country resolve 
shall be done, will and must be done. They shamed recruits into the ranks, 



64 INTKODUCTION. 

and made it almost impossible for deserters, or cowards, or malingerers to 
come liome ; they emptied the pockets of social idlers, or wealthy drones, into 
the treasuries of the Aid Societies ; and they compelled the shops and do- 
mestic trade of all cities to be favorable to the war. The American women 
were nearer right and more thoroughly united by this means, and their own 
healthier instincts, than the American men. The Army, whose bayonets 
were glittering needles, advanced with more unbroken ranks, and exerted 
almost a greater moral force than the army that carried loaded muskets. 

The Aid Societies and the direct oversight the women sought to give the 
men in the field, very much increased the reason for correspondence between 
the homes and the tents. 

The women were proud to write what those at the hearth-stone were 
doing for those who tended the camp-fires, and the men were happy and 
cheery to acknowledge the support they received from this home sympathy. 
The immense correspondence between the army and the homes, prodigious 
beyond belief as it was, some regiments sending home a thousand letters a 
week, and receiving as many more back; the constant transmission to the 
Wen of newspapers, full of the records of home work and army news, pro- 
duced a homogeneousness of feeling between the soldiers and the citizens, 
which kept the men in the field, civilians, and made the people at home, of 
both sexes, half-soldiers. 

Thus there never grew up in the army any purely military and anti-social 
or anti-civil sentiments. The soldiers studied and appreciated all the time 
the moral causes of the War, and were acquainted with the political as well 
as military complications. They felt all the impulses of home strengthen- 
ing their arms and encouraging their hearts. And their letters home, as a 
rule, were designed to put the best face upon things, and to encourage their 
wives and sweet-hearts, their sisters and parents, to bear their absence with 
fortitude, and even with cheerfulness. 

The influence on the tone of their correspondence, exerted by the fact 
that the women were always working for the Army, and that the soldiers 
always knew they were working, and were always receiving evidence of 
their care, may be better imagined than described. It largely ministered to 
that sympathetic unity between the soldiers and the country, which made 
our army always a corrective and an inspiration to our Governmental policy, 
and kept up that fine reciprocal influence between civil and military life, 
which gave an heroic fibre to all souls at home, and finally restored us our 
soldiers with their citizen hearts beating regularly under their uniforms, as 
they dropped them off" at the last drum-tap. 

H. W. B. 



WOMAN'S Work in the Civil War 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

Patriotism in some form, an attribute of woman in all nations and climes — Its modes of manifesta- 
tion — Pseans for victory — Lamentations for the death of a heroic leader — Personal leadership by 
women — The assassination of tyrants — The care of the sick and wounded of national armies — The 
hospitals established by the Empress Helena — The Beguines and their successors — The cantiuieres, 
vivandieres, etc. — Other modes in which women manifested their patriotism — Florence Nightingale 
and her labors — The results — The awakening of patriotic zeal among American women at the 
opening of the war — The organization of philanthropic effort — Hospital nurses — Miss Dix's re- 
jection of great numbers of applicants on account of youth — Hired nurses — Their services gene- 
rally prompted by patriotism rather than pay — The State relief agents (ladies) at Washington — 
The hospital transport system of the Sanitary Commission — Mrs. Harris's, Miss Barton's, Mrs. 
Fales', Miss Gilson's, and other ladles' services at the front during the battles of 1862 — Services of 
other ladies at Chancellorsville, at Gettysburg — The Field Relief of the Sanitary Commission, and 
services of ladies in the later battles — Voluntary services of women in the armies in the field at 
the West — Services in the hospitals, of garrisons and fortified towns — Soldiers' homes and lodges, 
and their matrons — Homes for Refugees — Instruction of the Freedmen — Refreshment Saloons at 
Philadelphia — Regular visiting of hospitals in the large cities — The Soldiers' Aid Societies, and 
their mode of operation — The extraordinary labors of the managers of the Branch Societies — 
Government clothing contracts — Mrs. Springer, Miss Wormeley and Miss Gilson — The managers 
of the local Soldiers' Aid Societies — The sacrifices made by the poor to contribute supplies — 
Examples — The labors of the young and the old — Inscriptions on articles — The poor seamstress — 
Five hundred bushels of wheat — The five dollar gold piece — The army of martyrs — The effect of ■ 
this female patriotism in stimulating the courage of the soldiers — Lack of persistence in this work 
among the Women of the South — Present and future — Effect of patriotism and self-sacrifice in 
elevating and ennobling the female character. 

N intense and passionate love of country, holding, for 
&Q! t^^ time, all other ties in abeyance, has been a not un- 
common trait of character among women of all countries 
and climes, throughout the ages of human history. In 
the nomadic races it assumed the form of attachment to the patri- 
archal rules and chiefs of the tribe ; in the more savage of the 
localized nations, it was reverence for the ruler, coupled with^|^ 
filial regard for the resting-places and graves of their ancestors. 

9 65 




But in the more highly organized and civilized countries, it 
was the institutions of the natioUj its religion, its sacred traditions, 
its history, as well as its kings, its military leaders, and its priests, 
that were the objects of the deep and intense patriotic devotion of 
its noblest and most gifted women. 

The manifestations of this patriotic zeal were diverse in different 
countries, and at different periods in the same country. At one 
time it contented itself with triumphal pseans and dances over 
victories won by the nation's armies, as in the case of Liiriam and 
the maidens of Israel at the destruction of the Egyptians at the 
Red Sea, or the victories of the armies led by David against the 
Philistines; or in the most heart-rending lamentations over the 
fall of the nation's heroes on the field of battle, as in the mourning 
of the Trojan maidens over the death of Hector; at other times, 
some brave and heroic spirit, goaded with the sense of her 
country's wrongs, girds upon her own fair and tender form, the 
armor of proof, and goes forth, the self-constituted but eagerly 
welcomed leader of its mailed hosts, to overthroAV the nation's foes. 
We need only recal Deborah, the avenger of the Israelites against 
the oppressions of the King of Canaan; Boadicea, the daring 
Queen of the Britons, and in later times, the heroic but hapless 
maid of Orleans, Jeanne d'Arc; and in the Hungarian war of 
1848, the brave but unfortunate Countess Teleki, as examples of 
these female patriots. 

In rare instances, this sense of the nation's sufferings from a 
tyrant's oppression, have so wrought upon the sensitive spirit, as 
to stimulate it to the determination to achieve the country's free- 
dom by the assassination of the oppressor. It was thus that Jael 
brought deliverance to her country by the murder of Sisera; 
Judith, by the assassination of Holofernes; and in modern times, 
Charlotte Corday sought the rescue of France from the grasj) of 
the murderous despot, Marat, by plunging the poniard to his 
heart. 

A far nobler, though less demonstrative manifestation of patri- 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 67 

otic devotion than either of these, is that which has prompted 
women in all ages to become ministering angels to the sick, the 
suffering, and the wounded among their countrymen who have 
periled life and health in the nation's cause. 

Occasionally, even in the earliest recorded wars of antiquity, we 
find high-born maidens administering solace to the wounded 
heroes on the field of battle, and attempting to heal their wounds 
by the appliances of their rude and simple surgery; but it was 
only the favorite leaders, never the common soldier, or the subor- 
dinate officer, who received these gentle attentions. The influence 
of Christianity, in its earlier development, tended to expand the 
sympathies and open the heart of woman to all gentle and holy 
influences, and it is recorded that the wounded Christian soldiers 
were, where it was possible, nm^sed and cared for by those of the 
same faith, both men and women. 

In the fifth century, the Empress Helena established hospitals for 
the sick and wounded soldiers of the empire, on the routes between 
Rome and Constantinople, and caused them to be carefully nursed. 
In the dark ages that followed, and amid the downfall of the 
Roman Empire, and the uprearing of the Gothic kingdoms that 
succeeded, there was little room or thought of mercy ; but the fair- 
haired women of the North encouraged their heroes to deeds of 
valor, and at times, ministered in their rude way to their wounds. 
The monks, at their monasteries, rendered some care and aid to 
the wounded in return for their exemption from plunder and ra- 
pine, and in the ninth century, an order of women consecrated to 
the work, the Beguines, predecessors of the modern Sisters of 
Charity, was established " to minister to the sick and wounded of 
the armies which then, and for centuries afterward, scarred the 
face of continental Europe with battle-fields.'' With the Beguines, 
however, and their successors, patriotism was not so much the 
controlling motive of action, as the attainment of merit by those 
deeds of charity and self-sacrifice. 

In the wars of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and the early part 



68 woman's woek in the civil war. 

of the nineteenth centuiy, while the hospitals had a moderate 
share of fair ministrants, chiefly of the religious orders, the only 
female service on the battle-field or in the camp, often the scene of 
fatal epidemics, was that of the cantinieres, vivandieres, filles du 
regiment, and other camp followers, who, at some risk of reputa- 
tion, accompanied the armies in their march, and brought to the 
wounded and often dying soldier, on the field of battle, the 
draught of water which quenched his raging thirst, or the cordial, 
which sustained his fast ebbing strength till relief could come. 
Humble of origin, and little circumspect in morals as many of 
these women were, they are yet deserving of credit for the courage 
and patriotism which led them to brave all the horrors of death, 
to relieve the suffering of the wounded of the regiments to which 
they were attached. Up to the period of the Crimean war in 
1854, though there had been much that was praiseworthy in the 
manifestations of female patriotism in connection with the move- 
ments of great armies, there had never been any systematic minis- 
tration, prompted by patriotic devotion, to the relief of the suffering 
sick and wounded of those armies. 

There were yet other modes, however, in which the women of 
ancient and modern times manifested their love of their country. 
The Spartan mother, who, without a tear, presented her sons with 
their shields, with the stern injunction to return with them, or 
upon them, that is, with honor untarnished, or dead, — ^the fair 
dames and maidens of Carthage, who divested themselves of their 
beautiful tresses, to furnish bowstrings for their soldiers, — ^the 
Jewish women who preferred a death of torture, to the acknow- 
ledgment of the power of the tyrant over their country's rulers, 
and their faith — the women of the Pays-de Yaud, whose moun- 
tain fastnesses and churches were dearer to them than life — ^the 
thousands of wives and mothers, who in our revolutionary strug- 
gle, and in our recent war, gave up freely at their country's call, 
their best beloved, regretting only that they had no more to give ; 
knowing full well, that in giving them up they condemned 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 69 

themselves to penury and want, to hard, grinding toil, and 
privations such as they had never before experienced, and not im- 
probably to the rending, by the rude vicissitudes of war, of those 
ties, dearer than life itself — those who in the presence of ruffians, 
capable of any atrocity dared, and in many cases suffered, a violent 
death, and indignities worse than death, by their fearless defense 
of the cause and flag of their country — and yet again, those who, 
in peril of their lives, for the love they bore to their country, 
guided hundreds of escaped prisoners, through the regions haunted 
by foes, to safety and freedom — all these and many others, whose 
deeds of heroism we have not space so much as to name, have 
shown their love of country as fully and worthily, as those who 
in hospital, in camp or on battle-field have ministered to the 
battle-scarred hero, or those who, in all the panoply of war, have 
led their hosts to the deadly charge, or the fierce affray of con- 
tending armies. 

Florence Nightingale, an English gentlewoman, of high social 
position and remarkable executive powers, was the first of her 
sex, at least among English-speaking nations, to systematize the 
patriotic ardor of her countrywomen, and institute such measures 
of reform in the care of sick and wounded soldiers in military 
hospitals, as should conduce to the comfort and speedy recovery 
of their inmates. She had voluntarily passed through the course 
of training, required of the hospital nurses and assistants, in 
Pastor Fliedner's Deaconess' Institution, at Kaiserswerth on the 
Rhine, before she entered upon her great mission in the hospitals 
at Scutari. She was ably seconded in her labors by other ladies 
of rank from England, who, actuated only by patriotic zeal, gave 
themselves to the work of bringing order out of chaos, cheerful- 
ness out of gloom, cleanliness out of the most revolting filth, and 
the sunshine of healtli out of the lazar house of corruption and 
death. In this heroic undertaking they periled their lives, more 
certainly, than those who took part in the fierce charge of Bala- 
clava. Some fell victims to their untiring zeal ; others, and Miss 



70 woman's work in the civil war. 

Nightingale among the number, were rendered hopeless invalids 
for life, by their exertions. 

Fifty years of peace had rendered our nation more entirely 
unacquainted with the arts of war, than was Great Britain, when, 
at the close of forty years of quiet, she again marshalled her 
troops in battle array. But though the transition was sudden 
from the arts of peace to the din and tumult of war, and the 
blunders, both from inexperience and dogged adherence to rou- 
tine, were innumerable, the hearts of the people, and especially 
the hearts of the gentler sex, were resolutely set upon one thing; 
that the citizen soldiers of the nation should be cared for, in 
sickness or in health, as the soldiers of no nation had ever been 
before. Soldiers' Aid Societies, Sewing Circles for the soldiers, 
and Societies for Relief, sprang up simultaneously with the organ- 
ization of regiments, in every village, town, and city throughout 
the North. Individual benevolence kept pace Avith organized 
charity, and the managers of the freight trains and expresses, 
running toward Washington, were in despair at the fearful accu- 
mulation of freight for the soldiers, demanding instant transpor- 
tation. It was inevitable that there should be waste and loss in 
this lavish outpouring ; but it was a manifestation of the patriotic 
feeling which throbbed in the hearts of the people, and which, 
through four years of war, never ceased or diminished aught of 
its zeal, or its abundant liberality. It was felt instinctively, that 
there would soon be a demand for nurses for the sick and 
wounded, and fired by the noble example of Florence Nightin- 
gale, though too often without her practical training, thousands 
of young, fair, and highly educated women offered themselves for 
the work, and strove for opportunities for their gentle ministry, 
as in other days they might have striven for the prizes of fortune. 

Soon order emerged from the chaos of benevolent impulse ; the 
Sanitary Commission and its affiliated Societies organized and 
wisely directed much of the philanthropic effort, which would 
otherwise have failed of accomplishing its intended work through 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 71 

misdirection; while other Commissions, Associations, and skil- 
fully managed personal labors, supplemented what was lacking in 
its earlier movements, and ere long the Christian Commission 
added intellectual and religious aliment to its supplies for the 
wants of the physical man. 

Of the thousands of applicants for the position of Hospital 
Nurses, the greater part were rejected promptly by the stern, but 
experienced lady, to whom the Government had confided the 
delicate and responsible duty of making the selection. The 
ground of rejection was usually the youthfulness of the appli- 
cants ; a sufficient reason, doubtless, in most cases, since the en- 
thusiasm, mingled in some instances, perhaps, with romance, 
which had prompted the offer, would often falter before the ex- 
tremely unpoetic realities of a nurse's duties, and the youth and 
often frail health of the applicants would soon cause them to 
give way under labors which required a mature strength, a firm 
will, and skill in all household duties. Yet ^^to err is human," 
and it need not surprise us, as it probably did not Miss Dix, to 
learn, that in a few instances, those whom she had refused to com- 
mission on account of their youthfulness, proved in other fields, 
their possession of the very highest qualifications for the care of 
the sick and wounded. Miss Gilson was one of the most remark- 
able of these instances ; and it reflects no discredit on Miss Dix's 
powers of discrimination, that she should not have discovered, in 
that girlish face, the indications of those high abilities, of which 
their possessor was as yet probably unconscious. The rejection 
of so many of these volunteer nurses necessitated the appointment 
of many from another class, — ^young women of culture and educa- 
tion, but generally from the humbler walks of life, in whose hearts 
the fire of patriotism was not less ardent and glowing than in 
those of their wealthier sisters. Many of these, though they 
would have preferred to perform their labors without fee or 
reward, were compelled, from the necessities of those at home, to 
accept the wholly inadequate pittance (twelve dollars a month 



72 

and theii food) which was offered them by the Government, but 
they served in their several stations with a fidelity, intelligence, 
and patient devotion which no money could purchase. The tes- 
timony received from all quarters to the faithfulness and great 
moral worth of these nurses, is greatly to their honor. Not one 
of them, so far as we can learn, ever disgraced her calling, or 
gave cause for reproach. We fear that so general an encomium 
could not truthfully be bestowed on all the volunteer nurses. 

But nursing in the hospitals, was only a small part of the work 
to which patriotism called American women. There was the 
collection and forwarding to the field, there to be distributed by 
the chaplains, or some specially appointed agent, of those supplies 
which the families and friends of the soldiers so earnestly desired 
to send to them ; socks, shirts, handkerchiefs, havelocks, and 
delicacies in the way of food. The various states had their agents, 
generally ladies, in Washington, who performed these duties, du- 
ring the first two years of the war, while as yet the Sanitary 
Commission had not fully organized its system of Field Relief. 
In the West, every considerable town furnished its quota of sup- 
plies, and, after every battle, voluntary agents undertook their 
distribution. 

During McClellan's peninsular campaign, a Hospital Transport 
service was organized in connection with the Sanitary Commission, 
which numbered among its members several gentlemen and ladies 
of high social position, whose labors in improvising, often from 
the scantiest possible supplies, the means of comfort and healing 
for the fever-stricken and wounded, resulted in the preservation 
of hundreds of valuable lives. 

Mrs. John Harris, the devoted and heroic Secretary of the 
Ladies' Aid Society of Philadelphia, had already, in the Penin- 
sular campaign, encountered all the discomforts and annoyances 
of a life in the camp, to render what assistance she could to the 
sick and wounded, while they were yet in the field or camp hos- 
pital. At Cedar Mountain, and in the subsequent battles of 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 73 

August^ in Pope's Campaign, Miss Barton, Mrs. T. J. Fales, and 
some others also brought supplies to the field, and ministered to 
the wounded, while the shot and shell were crashing around 
them, and Antietam had its representatives of the fair sex, angels 
of mercy, but for whose tender and judicious ministrations, hun- 
dreds and perhaps thousands would not have seen another morn- 
ing's light. In the race for Richmond which followed, Miss 
Barton's train was hospital and diet kitchen to the Ninth Corps, 
and much of the time for the other Corps also. At Fredericks- 
burg, Mrs. Harris, Mrs. Lee, Mrs. Plummer, Mrs. Tales, and 
Miss Barton, and we believe also. Miss Gilson, were all actively 
engaged. A part of the same noble company, though not all, 
were at Chancellorsville. 

At Gettysburg, Mrs. Harris was present and actively engaged, 
and as soon as the battle ceased, a delegation of ladies connected 
with the Sanitary Commission toiled most faithfully to alleviate 
the horrors of war. In the subsequent battles of the Army of 
the Potomac, the Field Relief Corps of the Sanitary Commission 
with its numerous male and female collaborators, after, or at the 
time of all the great battles, the ladies connected with the Chris- 
tian Commission and a number of efficient independent workers, 
did all in their power to relieve the constantly swelling tide of 
human suffering, especially during that period of less than ninety 
days, when more than ninety thousand men, wounded, dying, or 
dead, covered the battle-fields with their gore. 

In the West, after the battle of Shiloh, and the subsequent 
engagements of Buell's campaign, women of the highest social 
position visited the battle-field, and encountered its horrors, to 
minister to those who were suffering, and bring them relief. 
Among these, the names of Mrs. Martha A. Wallace, the widow 
of General W. H. L. Wallace, who fell in the battle of Shiloh; 
of Mrs. Harvey, the widow of Governor Louis Harvey of Wis- 
consin, who was drowned while on a mission of philanthropy to 
the W sconsin soldiers wounded at Shiloh; and the sainted Mar- 
io 



74 

garet E. Breckinridge of St. Louis, will be readily recalled. 
During Grant's Vicksburg campaign, as well as after Rosecrans' 
battles of Stone River and Chickamauga, there were many of 
these heroic women who braved all discomforts and difficulties to 
bring healing and comfort to the gallant soldiers who had fallen 
on the field. Mrs. Hoge and Mrs. Livermore, of Chicago, visited 
Grant's camp in front of Vicksburg, more than once, and by 
their exertions, saved his army from scurvy; Mrs. Porter, Mrs. 
Bickerdyke, and several others are deserving of mention for their 
untiring zeal both in these and Sherman's Georgian campaigns. 
Mrs. Bickerdyke has won undying renown throughout the 
AYestern armies as pre-eminently the friend of the private soldier. 

As our armies, especially in the West and Southwest, won 
more and more of the enemy's territory, the important towns of 
which were immediately occupied as garrisons, hospital posts, 
and secondary bases of the armies, the work of nursing and pro- 
viding special diet and comfort in the general hospitals at these 
posts, which were often of great extent, involved a vast amount of 
labor and frequently serious privation, and personal discomfort 
on the part of the nurses. Some of these who volunteered for 
the work were remarkable for their earnest and faithful labors in 
behalf of the soldiers, under circumstances which would have dis- 
heartened any but the most resolute spirits. We may name 
without invidiousness among these, Mrs. Colfax, Miss Maertz, 
Miss Melcenia Elliott, Miss Parsons, Miss Adams, and Miss 
Brayton, who, with many others, perhaps equally faithful, by 
their constant assiduity in their duties, have given proof of their 
ardent love of their country. 

To provide for the great numbers of men discharged from the 
hospitals while yet feeble and ill, and without the means of going 
to their often distant homes, and the hundreds of enfeebled and 
mutilated soldiers, Avhose days of service were over, and who, 
often in great bodily weakness, nought to obtain the pay due 
them from the Government, and not unseldom died in the effort; 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 70 

the United States Sanitary Commission and the Western Sani- 
tary Commission established Soldiers' Homes at Wasliington, 
Cincinnati, Chicago, Louisville, Nashville, St. Louis, Memphis, 
Vicksburg, and other places. In these, tliese disabled men 
found food and shelter, medical attendance when needed, assist- 
ance in collecting their dues, and aid in their transportation 
homeward. To each of these institutions, a Matron was assigned, 
often with female assistants. The duties of these Matrons were 
extremely arduous, but they were performed most nobly. To 
some of these homes were attached a department for the mothers, 
wives and daughters of the wounded soldiers, who had come on 
to care for them, and who often found themselves, when ready to 
return, penniless, and without a shelter. To these, a helping 
hand, and a kind welcome, was ever extended. 

To these should be added the Soldiers' Lodges, estaBlished at 
some temporary stopping-places on the routes to and from the 
great battle-fields; places where the soldier, fainting from his 
wearisome march, found refreshment, and if sick, shelter and 
care; and the wounded, on their distressing journey from the 
battle-field to the distant hospitals, received the gentle ministra- 
tions of women, to allay their thirst, relieve their painful posi- 
tions, and strengthen their wearied bodies for further journey ings. 
There were also, in New York, Boston, and many other of the 
Northern cities. Soldiers' Homes or Depots, not generally con- 
nected with the Sanitary Commission, in which invalid soldiers 
were cared for and their interests protected. In all these there 
were efficient and capable Matrons. In the West, there were 
also Homes for Refugees, families of poor whites generally though 
not always sufferers for their Union sentiments, sent north by the 
military commanders from all the States involved in the rebel- 
lion. Reduced to the lowest depths of poverty, often suffering 
absolute starvation, usually dirty and of uncleanly habits, in 
many cases ignorant in the extreme, and intensely indolent, these 
poor creatures had often little to recommend them to the sym- 



76 

pathy of their northern friends, save their common humanity, and 
their childlike attachment to the Union cause. Yet on these, 
women of high culture and refinement, women who, but for the 
fire of patriotism which burned in their hearts, would have turned 
away, sickened at the mental and moral degradation which seemed 
proof against all instruction or tenderness, bestowed their constant 
and unwearying care, endeavoring to rouse in them the instinct 
of neatness and the love of household duties; instructing their 
children, and instilling into the darkened minds of the adults 
some ideas of religious duty, and some gleams of intelligence. 
No mission to the heathen of India, of Tartary, or of the African 
coasts, could possibly have been more hopeless and discouraging; 
but they triumphed over every obstacle, and in many instances 
had the happiness of seeing these poor people restored to their 
southern homes, with higher aims, hopes, and aspirations, and 
with better habits, and more intelligence, than they had ever 
before possessed. 

The camps and settlements of the freedmen were also the ob- 
jects of philanthropic care. To these, many highly educated 
women volunteered to go, and establishing schools, endeavored to 
raise these former slaves to the comprehension of their privileges 
and duties as free men. The work was arduous, for though there 
was a stronger desire for learning, and a quicker apprehension of 
religious and moral instruction, among the freedmen than among 
the refugees, their slave life had made them fickle, untruthful, and 
to some extent, dishonest and unchaste. Yet the faithful and 
indefatigable teachers found their labors wonderfully successful, 
and accomplished a great amount of good. 

Another and somewhat unique manifestation of the patriotism 
of our American women, was the service of the Refreshment 
Saloons at Philadelphia. For four years, the women of that por- 
tion of Philadelphia lying in the vicinity of the Navy Yard, 
responded, by night or by day, to the signal gun, fired whenever 
one or more regiments of soldiers were passing through the city, 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 77 

and hastening to the Vokinteer or the Cooper Shop Eefreshment 
Saloons^ spread before the soldiers an ample repast^ and served 
them with a cordiality and heartiness deserving all praise. Four 
hundred thousand soldiers were fed by these w^illing hands and 
generous hearts, and in hospitals connected with both Refreshment 
Saloons the sick were tenderly cared for. 

In the large general hospitals of Washington, Philadelphia, 
'New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis, in addition to the volun- 
teer and paid nurses, there were committees of ladies, who, on 
alternate days, or on single days of each week, were accustomed 
to visit the hospitals, bringing delicacies and luxuries, preparing 
special dishes for the invalid soldiers, writing to their friends for 
them, etc. To this sacred duty, many women of high social 
position devoted themselves steadily for nearly three years, alike 
amid the summer's heat and the winter's cold, never failing of 
visiting the patients, to whom their coming was the most joyous 
event of the otherwise gloomy day. 

But these varied forms of manifestation of patriotic zeal would 
have been of but little material service to the soldiers, had there 
not been behind them, throughout the loyal North, a vast net- 
work of organizations extending to every village and hamlet, for 
raising money and preparing and forwarding supplies of wliat- 
ever was needful for the welfare of the sick and wounded. We 
have already alluded to the spontaneity and universality of these 
organizations at the beginning of the Avar. They were an out- 
growth alike of the patriotism and the systematizing tendencies 
of the people of the North. It might have been expected that 
the zeal which led to their formation would soon have cooled, 
and, perhaps, this would have been the case, but for two causes, 
viz. : that they very early became parts of more comprehensive 
organizations officered by women of untiring energy, and the 
most exalted patriotic devotion ; and that the events of the war 
constantly kept alive the zeal of a few in each society, who 
spurred on the laggards, and encouraged the faint-hearted. These 



78 woman's work in the civil war. 

Soldiers' Aid Societies, Ladies' Aid Associations, Alert Clubs, 
Soldiers' Relief Societies, or by whatever other name they were 
called, were usually auxiliary to some Society in the larger cities, 
to which their several contributions of money and supplies were 
sent, by which their activity and labors were directed, and which 
generally forwarded to some central source of supply, their dona- 
tions and its own. The United States Sanitary Commission had 
its branches, known under various names, as Branch Commissions, 
General Soldiers' Aid Societies, Associates, Local Sanitary Com- 
missions, etc., at Boston, Albany, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Buffalo, 
Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Chicago, and three central organiza- 
tions, the Women's Central Association of Relief, in New York, 
the Sanitary Commission, at Washington, and the Western Depot 
of Supplies, at Louisville, Kentucky. Af&liated to these were 
over twelve thousand local Soldiers' Aid Societies. The Western 
Sanitary Commission had but one central organization, besides its 
own depot, viz. : The Ladies' Union Aid Society, of St. Louis, 
which had a very, considerable number of auxiliaries in Missouri 
and Iowa. The Christian Commission had its branches in Bos- 
ton, New York, Brooklyn, Baltimore, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Chi- 
cago, and St. Louis, and several thousand local organizations 
reported to these. Aside from these larger bodies, there were the 
Ladies' Aid Association of Philadelphia, with numerous auxil- 
iaries in Pennsylvania, the Baltimore Ladies' Relief Association, 
the New England Soldiers' Relief Association of New York; 
and during the first two years of the war. Sanitary Commissions 
in Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois, and State Relief Societies in Wis- 
consin, Ohio, Michigan, New York, and some of the other States, 
with their representative organizations in Washington. Several 
Central Aid Societies having large numbers of auxiliaries, acted 
independently for the first two years, but were eventually merged 
in the Sanitary Commission. Prominent among these were the 
Hartford Ladies' Aid Society, having numerous auxiliaries 
throughout Connecticut, the Pittsburg Reliof Committee, draw- 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 79 

ing its supplies from the circumjacent country, and we believe, 
also, the Penn Relief Society, an organization among the Friends 
of Philadelphia and vicinity. The supplies for the Volunteer 
and Cooper Shop Refreshment Saloons of Philadelphia, were 
contributed by the citize. is of that city and vicinity. 

When it is remembered, that by these various organizations, a 
sum exceeding fifty millions of dollars was raised, during a little 
more than four years, for the comfort and welfare of the soldiers, 
their families, their widows, and their orphans, we may be certain 
that there was a vast amount of work done by them. Of this 
aggregate of labor, it is difficult to form any adequate idea. The 
ladies who were at the head of the Branch or Central organiza- 
tions, worked day after day, during the long and hot days of 
summer, and the brief but cold ones of winter, as assiduously 
and steadily, as any merchant in his counting-house, or the 
banker at his desk, and exhibited business abilities, order, fore- 
sight, judgment, and tact, such as are possessed by very few of 
the most eminent men of business in the country. The extent 
of their operations, too, was in several instances commensurate 
with that of some of our merchant princes. Miss Louisa Lee 
Schuyler and Miss Ellen Collins, of the Women's Central Asso- 
ciation of Relief at New York, received and disbursed in sup- 
plies and money, several millions of dollars in value; Mrs. 
Rouse, Miss Mary Clark Brayton, and Miss Ellen F. Terry, of 
the Cleveland Soldiers' Aid Society, somewhat more than a mil- 
lion; Miss Abby May, of Boston, not far from the same amount; 
Mrs. Hoge, and Mrs. Livermore, of the N. W. Sanitary Com- 
mission, over a million; while Mrs. Seymour, of Buffalo, Miss 
Valeria Campbell, of Detroit, Mrs. Colt, of Milwaukie, Miss 
Rachel W. McFadden, of Pittsburg, Mrs. Hoadley, and Mrs. 
Mendenhall, of Cincinnati, Mrs. Clapp, and Miss H. A. Adams, 
of the St. Louis Ladies' Aid Society, Mrs. Joel Jones, and Mrs. 
John Harris, of the Philadelphia Ladies' Aid Society, Mrs. 
Stranahan, and Mrs. Archer, of Brooklyn, if they did not do 



80 woman's work in the civil war. 

quite so large a business, at least rivaled the merchants of the 
smaller cities, in the extent of their disbursements ; and when it 
is considered, that these ladies were not only the managers and 
financiers of their transactions, but in most cases the book- 
keepers also, we think their right to be regarded as possessing 
superior business qualifications will not be questioned. 

But some of these lady managers possessed still other claims 
to our respect, for their laborious and self-sacrificing patriotism. 
It occurred to several ladies in different sections of the country, 
as they ascertained the suffering condition of some of the fami- 
lies of the soldiers, (the early volunteers, it will be remembered, 
received no bounties, or very trifling ones), that if they could 
secure for them, at remunerative prices, the making of the sol- 
diers' uniforms, or of the hospital bedding and clothing, they 
might thus render them independent of charity, and capable of 
self-support. 

Three ladies (and perhaps more), Mrs. Springer, of St. Louis, 
in behalf of the Ladies' Aid Society of that city. Miss Katherine 
P. Wormeley, of Newport, E,. I., and Miss Helen L. Gilson, of 
Chelsea, Mass., applied to the Governmental purveyors of clothing, 
for the purpose of obtaining this work. There was necessarily 
considerable difficulty in accomplishing their purpose. The army 
of contractors opposed them strongly, and in the end, these ladies 
were each obliged to take a contract of large amount themselves, 
in order to be able to furnish the work to the wives and daughters 
of the soldiers. In St. Louis, the terms of the contract were 
somewhat more favorable than at the East, and on the expiration 
of one, another was taken up, and about four hundred women 
were supplied with remunerative work throughout the whole period 
of the war. The terms of the contract necessitated the careful in- 
spection of the clothing, and the certainty of its being well made, 
by the lady contractors; but in point of fact, it was all cut and 
prepared for the sewing- women by Mrs. Springer and her asso- 
ciates, who, giving their services to this work, divided among 



INTEODUCTORY CHAPTEil. 81 

their employes the entire sum received for each contract, paying 
them weekly for their work. The strong competition at the East, 
rendered the price paid for the work, for which contracts were 
taken by Miss Wormeley and Miss Gilson, less than at the West, 
but Miss Gilson, and, we believe. Miss Wormeley also, raised an 
additional sum, and paid to the sewing-women more than the 
contract price for the work. It required a spirit thoroughly 
imbued with patriotism and philanthropy to carry on this work, 
for the drudgery connected with it was a severe tax upon the 
strength of those who undertook it. In the St. Louis contracts, 
the officers and managers of the Ladies^ Aid Society, rendered as- 
sistance to Mrs. Springer, who had the matter in charge, so far as 
they could, but not satisfied with this, one of their number, the 
late Mrs. Palmer, spent a portion of every day in visiting the 
soldiers' families who were thus employed, and whenever addi- 
tional aid was needed, it was cheerfully and promptly bestowed. 
In this noble work of Christian charity, Mrs. Palmer overtasked 
her physical powers, and after a long illness, she passed from 
earth, to be reckoned among that list of noble martyrs, who sacri- 
ficed life for the cause of their country. 

But it was not the managers and leaders of these central asso- 
ciations alone whose untiring exertions, and patient fidelity to 
their patriotic work should excite our admiration and reverence. 
Though moving in a smaller circle, and dealing with details 
rather than aggregates, there were, in almost every village and 
town, those whose zeal, energy, and devotion to their patriotic 
work, was as worthy of record, and as heroic in character, as the 
labors of their sisters in the cities. We cannot record the names 
of those thousands of noble women, but their record is on high, 
and in the grand assize, their zealous toil to relieve their suffering 
brothers, who were fighting or had fought the nation's battles, 
will be recognized by Him, who regards every such act of love 
and philanthropy as done to Himself. 

Nor are these, alone, among those whose deeds of love and 
11 



82 



patriotism are inscribed in the heavenly record. The whole his- 
tory of the contributions for relief, is glorified by its abundant in- 
stances of self-sacrifice. The rich gave, often , largely and nobly 
from their wealth ; but a full moiety of the fifty millions of volun- 
tary gifts, came from the hard earnings, or patient labors of the 
poor, often bestowed at the cost of painful privation. Incidents 
like the following were of every-day occurrence, during the later 
years of the war: "In one of the mountainous countries at the 
North, in a scattered farming district, lived a mother and daughters, 
too poor to obtain by purchase, the material for making hospital 
clothing, yet resolved to do something for the soldier. Twelve 
miles distant, over the mountain, and accessible only by a road 
almost impassable, was the county-town, in which there was a 
Relief Association. Borrowing a neighbor's horse, either the 
mother or daughters came regularly every fortnight, to procure 
from this society, garments to make up for the hospital. They 
had no money ; but though the care of their few acres of sterile 
land devolved upon themselves alone, they could and would find 
time to work for the sufferers in the hospitals. At length, curious 
to know the secret of such fervor in the cause, one of the managers 
of the association addressed them : " You have some relative, a son, 
or brother, or father, in the war, I suppose ?'' "No!'' was the 
reply, "not now; our only brother fell at Ball's Bluff." "Why 
then," asked the manager, " do you feel so deep an interest in this 
work?" " Our country's cause is the cause of God, and we would 
do what we can, for His sake," was the sublime reply. 

Take another example. " In that little hamlet on the blealv 
and barren hills of New England, far away from the great city or 
even the populous village, you will find a mother and daughter 
living in a humble dwelling. The husband and father has lain 
for many years 'neath the sod in the graveyard on the hill slope; 
the only son, the hope and joy of both mother and sister, at the 
call of dutj , gave himself to the service of his country, and left 
those whom he loved as his own life, to toil at home alone. By 



INTEODUCTOEY CHAPTEE. 83 

and bye, at Williamsburg, or Fair Oaks, or in that terrible re- 
treat to James River, or at Cedar Mountain, it matters not which, 
the swift speeding bullet laid him l(m, and after days, or it may 
be weeks of terrible suffering, he gave up his young life on the 
altar of his country. The shock was a terrible one to those lone 
dwellers on the snowy hills. He was their all, but it was for the 
cause of Freedom, of Right, of God ; and hushing the wild beating 
of their hearts they bestir themselves, in their deep poverty, to 
do something for the cause for which their young hero had given 
his life. It is but little, for they are sorely straitened ; but the 
mother, though her heart is wrapped in the darkness of sorrow, 
saves the expense of mourning apparel, and the daughter turns 
her faded dress ; the little earnings of both are carefully hoarded, 
the pretty chintz curtains which had made their humble room 
cheerful, are replaced by paper, and by dint of constant saving,^ 
enough money is raised to purchase the other materials for a hos- 
pital quilt, a pair of socks, and a shirt, to be sent to the Relief 
Association, to give comfort to some poor wounded soldier, tossing 
in agony in some distant hospital. And this, with but slight 
variation is the history of hundreds, and perhaps thousands of 
the articles sent to the soldiers' aid societies. 

This fire of patriotic zeal, while it glowed alike in the hearts of 
the rich and poor, inflamed the young as well as the old. Little 
girls, who had not attained their tenth year, or who had just 
passed it, denied themselves the luxuries and toys they had long 
desired, and toiled with a patience and perseverance wholly foreign 
to childish nature, to procure or make something of value for their 
country's defenders. On a pair of socks sent to the Central Asso- 
ciation of Relief, was pinned a paper with this legend : " These 
stockings were knit by a little girl five years old, and she is going 
to knit some more, for mother said it will help some poor soldier." 
The official reports of the Women's Soldiers' Aid Society of 
Northern Ohio, the Cleveland branch of the Sanitary Commis- 
sion, furnish the following incident: "Every Saturday morning 



84 woman's work in I'he civil war. 

finds Emma Andrews, ten years of age, at the rooms of the Aid 
Society with an application for work. Her little basket is soon 
filled with pieces of half- worn linen, which, dm^ing the week, she 
cuts into towels or handkerchiefs; hems, and returns, neatly 
washed and ironed, at her next visit. Her busy fingers have 
already made two hundred and twenty-nine towels, and the patri- 
otic little girl is still earnestly engaged in her Avork.'' Holidays 
and half holidays in the country were devoted by the little ones 
with great zeal, to the gathering of blackberries and grapes, for the 
preparations of cordials and native wines for the hospitals, and the 
picking, paring and drying peaches and apples, which, in their 
abundance, proved a valuable safeguard against scurvy, which 
threatened the destruction or serious weakening of our armies, 
more than once. In the cities and large villages the children, 
with generous self-denial, gave the money usually expended for 
fireworks to purchase onions and pickles for the soldiers, to pre- 
vent scurvy. A hundred thousand dollars, it is said, was thus 
consecrated, by these little ones, to this benevolent work. 

In the days of the Sanitary Fairs, hundreds of groups of little 
girls held their miniature fairs, stocked for the most part with 
articles of their own production, upon the door step, or the walk 
in front of their parents' dwellings, or in the wood-shed, or in 
some vacant room, and the sums realized from their sales, vary- 
ing from five to one hundred dollars, were paid over, without 
any deduction for expenses, since labor and attendance were volun- 
tary and the materials a gift, to the treasuries of the great fairs 
then in progress. 

Nor were the aged women lacking in patriotic devotion. Such 
inscriptions as these were not uncommon. "The fortunate owner 
of these socks is secretly informed, that they are the one hundred 
and ninety-first pair knit for our brave boys by Mrs. Abner Bart- 
lett, of Medford, Mass., now aged eighty-five years." 

A barrel of hospital clothing sent from Conway, Mass., con- 
tained a pair of socks knit by a lady ninety-seven years old, who 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. <50 

declared h ^rself ready and anxious to do all she could. A home- 
spun blanket bore the inscription, ^^ This blanket was carried by 
Milly Aldrich, who is ninety-three years old, down hill and up 
hill, one and a-half miles, to be given to some soldier." 

A box of lint bore this touching record, ^^ Made in a sick-room 
where the sunlight has not entered for nine years, but where God 
has entered, and where two sons have bade their mother good- 
bye, as they have gone out to the war.'^ 

Every one knows the preciousness of the household linen which 
has been for generations an heirloom in a family. Yet in nume- 
rous instances, linen sheets, table-cloths, and napkins, from one 
hundred and twenty to two hundred years old, which no money 
could have purchased, were dedicated, often by those who had 
nought else to give, to the service of the hospital. 

An instance of generous and self-denying patriotism related by 
Mrs. D. P. Livermore, of the Northwestern Sanitary Commission, 
deserves a record in this connection, as it was one which has had 
more than one counterpart elscAvhere. "Some two or three 
months ago, a poor girl, a seamstress, came to our rooms. ^I do 
not feel right,^ she said, Hhat I am doing nothing for our soldiers 
in the hospitals, and have . resolved to do something immediately. 
Which do you prefer — that I should give money, or buy material 
and manufacture it into garments V '^ 

"You must be guided by your circumstances,'' was the answer 
made her; "we need both money and supplies, and you must do 
that which is most convenient for you." 

" I prefer to give you money, if it will do as much good." 

"Very well; then give money, which we need badly, and 
without which we cannot do what is most necessary for our brave 
sick men." 

"Then I will give you the entire earnings of the next two 
weeks. I'd give more, but I have to help support my mother 
who is an invalid. Generally I make but one vest a day, but I 
will work earli iv and later these two weeks." In two weeks she 



86 



came again, the poor sewing girl, her face radiant with the con- 
sciousness of philanthropic intent. Opening her porte-monnaie, 
she counted out nineteen dollars and thirty-seven cents. Every 
penny was earned by the slow needle, and she had stitched away 
into the hours of midnight on every one of the working days of 
the week. The patriotism which leads to such sacrifices as 
these, is not less deserving of honor than that which finds scope 
for its energies in ministering to the wounded on the battle-field 
or in the crowded wards of a hospital. 

Two other offerings inspired by the true spirit of earnest and 
active philanthropy, related by the same lady, deserve a place 
here. 

" Some farmers' wives in the north of Wisconsin, eighteen miles 
fi:'om a railroad, had given to the Commission of their bed and 
table linen, their husbands' shirts and drawers, their scanty 
supply of dried and canned fruits, till they had exhausted their 
ability to do more in this direction. Still they were not satisfied. 
So they cast about to see what could be done in another way. 
They were all the wives of small farmers, lately moved to the 
West, all living in log cabins, where one room sufficed for 
kitchen, parlor, laundry, nursery and bed-room, doing their own 
house-work, sewing, baby-tending, dairy-work, and all. What 
Goidd they do? 

"They were not long in devising a way to gratify the longings 
of their motherly and patriotic hearts, and instantly set about 
carrying it into action. They resolved to beg wheat of the 
neighboring farmers, and convert it into money. Sometimes on 
foot, and sometimes with a team, amid the snows and mud of 
early spring, they canvassed the country for twenty and twenty- 
five miles around, everywhere eloquently pleading the needs of 
the blue-coated soldier boys in the hospitals, the eloquence every- 
where acting as an open sesame to the granaries. Now they 
obtained a little from a rich man, and then a great deal from a 
poor man — deeds of benevolence are half the time in an inverse 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 87 

ratio to the ability of the benefactors — till they had accumulated 
nearly five hundred bushels of wheat. This they sent to market, 
obtained the highest market price for it, and forwarded the pro- 
ceeds to the Commission. As we held this hard-earned money 
in our hands, we felt that it was consecrated, that the holy pur- 
pose and resolution of these noble women had imparted a sacred- 
ness to it.^^ 

Very beautiful is the following incident, narrated by the same 
lady, of a little girl, one of thousands of the little ones, who 
have, during the war, given up precious and valued keepsakes to 
aid in ministering to the sick and wounded soldiers. "A little 
girl not nine years old, with sweet and timid grace, came into the 
rooms of the Commission, and laying a five dollar gold-piece on 
our desk, half frightened, told us its history. 'My uncle gave 
me that before the war, and I was going to keep it always; but 
he's got killed in the army, and mother says now I may give it 
to the soldiers if I want to — and I'd like to do so. I don't sup- 
pose it will buy much for them, will it?' " We led the child to 
the store-room, and proceeded to show her how valuable her gift 
was, by pointing out what it would buy — so many cans of con- 
densed milk, or so many bottles of ale, or pounds of tea, or cod- 
fish, etc. Her face brightened with pleasure. But when we 
explained to her that her five dollar gold-piece was equal to seven 
dollars and a half in greenbacks, and told her how much comfort 
we had been enabled to carry into a hosj^ital, with as small an 
amount of stores as that sum would purchase, she fairly danced 
with joy. 

"Oh, it will do lots of good, won't it?" And folding her 
hands before her, she begged, in her charmingly modest way, 
"Please tell me something that you've seen in the hospitals?" 
A narrative of a few touching events, not such as would too 
severely shock the little creature, but which plainly showed the 
necessity of continued benevolence to the hospitals, filled her 
sweet eyes with tears, and drew from her the resolution, "to save 



88 WOMAN S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR. 

all her money, and to get all the girls to do so, to buy things for 
the wounded soldiers.'^ 

Innumerable have been the methods by which the loyalty and 
patriotism of our countrywomen have manifested themselves; no 
memorial can ever record the thousandth part of their labors, 
their toils, or their sacrifices; sacrifices which, in so many in- 
stances, comprehended the life of the earnest and faithful worker. 
A grateful nation and a still more grateful army will ever hold 
in remembrance, such martyrs as Margaret Breckinridge, Anna 
M. Ross, Arabella Griffith Barlow, Mrs. Howland, Mrs. Plum- 
mer, Mrs. Mary E. Palmer, Mrs. S. C. Pomeroy, Mrs. C. M. 
Kirkland, Mrs. David Dudley Field, and Sweet Jenny Wade, of 
Gettysburg, as well as many others, who, though less widely 
known, laid down their lives as truly for the cause of their 
country; and their names should be inscribed upon the ever 
during granite, for they were indeed the most heroic spirits of the 
war, and to them, belong its unfading laurels and its golden crowns. 

And yet, we are sometimes inclined to hesitate in our esti- 
mate of the comparative magnitude of the sacrifices laid upon 
the Nation's altar; not in regard to these, for she who gave 
her life, as well as her services, to the Nation's cause, gave all 
she had to give; but in reference to the others, who, though 
serving the cause faithfully in their various ways, yet returned 
unscathed to their homes. Great and noble as were the sacrifices 
made by these women, and fitted as they were to call forth our 
admiration, were they after all, equal to those of the mothers, 
sisters, and daughters, who, though not without tears, yet calmly, 
and with hearts burning with the fire of patriotism, willingly, 
gave up their best beloved to fight for the cause of their country 
and their God? A sister might give up an only brother, the 
playmate of her childhood, her pride, and her hope; a daughter 
might bid adieu to a father dearly beloved, whose care and gui- 
dance she still needs and will continue to need. A mother might, 
perchance, relinquish her only son, he on whom she had hoped 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 89 

to lean, as the strong staff and the beautiful rod of her old age ; 
all this might be, with sorrow indeed, and a deep and abiding 
sense of loneliness, not to be relieved, except by the return of 
that father, brother, or son. But the wife, who, fully worthy of 
that holy name, gave the parting hand to a husband who was 
dearer, infinitely dearer to her than father, son, or brother, and 
saw him go forth to the battle-field, where severe wounds or 
sudden and terrible death, were almost certainly to be his 
portion, sacrificed in that one act all but life, for she relinquished 
all that made life blissful. Yet even in this holocaust there were 
degrees, gradations of sacrifice. The wife of the officer might, 
perchance, have occasion to see how her husband was honored 
and advanced for his bravery and good conduct, and while he 
was spared, she was not likely to suffer the pangs of poverty. 
In these particulars, how much more sad was the condition of 
the wife of the private soldier, especially in the earlier years of 
the war. To her, except the letters often long delayed or cap- 
tured on their route, there were no tidings of her husband, ex- 
cept in the lists of the wounded or the slain ; and her home, often 
one of refinement and taste, was not only saddened by the absence 
of him who was its chief joy, but often stripped of its best be- 
longings, to help out the scanty pittance which rewarded her own 
severe toil, in furnishing food and clothing for herself and her 
little ones. Cruel, grinding poverty, was too often the portion 
of these poor women. At the West, women tenderly and care- 
fully reared, were compelled to undertake the rude labors of the 
field, to provide bread for their families. And Avhen, to so many 
of these poor women who had thus struggled with poverty, and 
the depressing influences of loneliness and weariness, there came 
the sad intelligence, that the husband so dearly loved, was among 
the slain, or that he had been captured and consigned to death by 
starvation and slow torture at Andersonville, where even now he 
might be filling an unknown grave, what wonder is it that in 
numerous cases the burden was too heavy for the wearied spirit, 

12 



90 

and insanity supervened^ or the broken heart found rest and re- 
union with the loved and lost in the grave. 

Yet in many instances, the heart that seemed nigh to break- 
ing, found solace in its sorrow, in ministering directly or indi- 
rectly to the wounded soldier, and forgetting its own misery, 
brought to other hearts and homes consolation and peace. This 
seems to us the loftiest and most divine of all the manifestations 
of the heroic spirit; it is nearest akin in its character to the con- 
duct of Him, who while " he was a man of sorrows and acquainted 
with grief,^^ yet found the opportunity, with his infinite tender- 
ness and compassion, to assuage every sorrow and soothe every 
grief but his own. 

The eifect of this patriotic zeal and fervor on the part of the 
wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters of the loyal North, in 
stimulating and encouraging the soldiers to heroic deeds, was 
remarkable. Napoleon sought to awaken the enthusiasm and 
love of fame of his troops in Egypt, by that spirit-stiiTing word, 
" Soldiers, from the height of yonder pyramids forty centuries look 
down upon you.^^ But to the soldier fighting the battles of free- 
dom, the thought that in every hamlet and village of the loyal 
North, patriotic women were toiling and watching for his welfare, 
and that they Avere ready to cheer and encourage him in the 
darkest hour, to medicine his wounds, and minister to his sickness 
and sorrows in the camp, on the battle-field, or in the hospital 
wards, was a far more grateful and inspiring sentiment, than the 
mythical watch and ward of the spectral hosts of a hundred cen- 
turies of the dead past. 

The loyal soldier felt that he was fighting, so to speak, under 
the very eyes of his countrywomen, and he was prompted to 
higher deeds of daring and valor by the thought. In the smoke 
and flame of battle, he bore, or followed the flag, made and con- 
secrated by female hands to his country^s service; many of the 
articles which contributed to his comfort., and strengthened his 
good right arm, and insj^irited his heart for the day of battle 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 91 

were the products of the toil and the gifts of his countrywomen; 
and he knew right well, that if he should fall in the fierce con- 
flict, the gentle ministrations of woman would be called in requi- 
sition, to bind up his wounds, to cool his fevered brow, to 
minister to his fickle or failing appetite, to soothe his sorrows, 
to communicate with his friends, and if death came to close his 
eyes, and comfort, so far as might be those who had loved him. 
This knowledge strengthened him in the conflict, and enabled 
him to strike more boldly and vigorously for freedom, until the 
time came when the foe, dispirited and exhausted, yielded up his 
last vantage ground, and the war was over. 

The Rebel soldiers were not thus sustained by home influences. 
At first, indeed. Aid Societies were formed all over the South, 
and supplies forwarded to their armies; but in the course of a 
year, the zeal of the Southern ladies cooled, and they contented 
themselves with waving their handkerchiefs to the soldiers, instead 
of providing for their wants; and thenceforward, to the end of 
the war, though there were no rebels so bitter and hearty in their 
expressions of hostility to the North, as the great mass of Southern 
women, it was a matter of constant complaint in the Rebel armies, 
that their women did nothing for their comfort. The complaint 
was doubtless exaggerated, for in their hospitals there were some 
women of high station who did minister to the wounded, but 
after the first year, the gifts and sacrifices of Southern women to 
their army and hospitals, were not tlie hundredth, hardly tlie 
thousandth part of those of the women of the North to their 
countrymen. 

A still more remarkable result of this wide-spread movement 
among the women of the North, was its effect upon the sex them- 
selves. Fifty years of peace had made us, if not "a nation of 
shop-keepers,'^ at least a people given to value too highly, the 
pomp and show of material wealth, and our women were as a 
class, the younger women especially, devoting to frivolous pur- 
suits, society, gaiety and display, the gifts wherewith God had 



92 

endowed them most bountifully. The war, and the benevolence 
and patriotism which it evoked, changed all this. The gay and 
thoughtless belle, the accomplished and beautiful leader of society, 
awoke at once to a new life. The soul of whose existence she 
had been almost as unconscious as Fouque's Undine, began to 
assert its powers, and the gay and fashionable woman, no longer 
ennuy^d by the emptiness and frivolity of life, found her thoughts 
and hands alike fully occupied, and rose into a sphere of life and 
action, of which, a month before, she would have considered her- 
self incapable. 

Saratoga and Newport, and the other haunts of fashion were 
not indeed deserted, but the visitors there were mostly new faces, 
the wives and daughters of those who had grown rich through 
the contracts and vicissitudes of the war, while their old habitues 
were toiling amid the summer's heat to provide supplies for the 
hospitals, superintending sanitary fairs, or watching and aiding 
the sick and wounded soldiers in the hospitals, or at the front of 
the army. In these labors of love, many a fair face grew pale, 
many a light dancing step became slow and feeble, and ever and 
anon the light went out of eyes, that but a little while before had 
flashed and glowed in conscious beauty and pride. But though 
the cheeks might grow pale, the step feeble, and the eyes dim, 
there was a holier and more transcendent beauty about them than 
in their gayest hours. " We looked daily,'' says one who was 
herself a participant in this blessed work, in speaking of one who, 
after years of self-sacrificing devotion, at last laid down her young 
life in patriotic toil, "^ve looked daily to see the halo surround 
her head, for it seemed as if God would not suffer so pure and 
saintly a soul to walk the earth without a visible manifestation 
of his love for her." Work so ennobling, not only elevated and 
etherealized the mind and soul, but it glorified the body, and 
many times it shed a glory and beauty over the plainest faces, 
somewhat akin to that which transfigured the Jewish lawgiver, 
when he came down from the Mount. But it has done more 



IIs^TEODUCTORY CHAPTEE. 93 

than this. The soul once ennobled by participation in a great 
and glorious work, can never again be satisfied to come down to 
the heartlessness, the frivolities, the petty jealousies, and little- 
nesses of a life of fashion. Its aspirations and sympathies lie 
otherwheres, and it must seek in some sphere of humanitarian' 
activity or Christian usefulness, for work that will gratify its 
longings. 

How pitiful and mean must the brightest of earth's gay assem- 
blages appear, to her who, day after day, has held converse with 
the souls of the departing, as they plumed their wings for the 
flight heavenward, and accompanying them in their upward 
journey so far as mortals may, has been privileged with some 
glimpse through the opening gates of pearl, into the golden 
streets of the city of our God ! 

With such experiences, and a discipline so purifying and en- 
nobling, we can but anticipate a still higher and holier future, for 
the women of our time. To them, we must look for the advance- 
ment of all noble and philanthropic enterprises ; the lifting vagrant 
and wayward childliood from the paths of ruin ; the universal dif- 
fusion of education and culture; the succor and elevation of the 
poor, the weak, and the down-trodden ; the rescue and reformation 
of the fallen sisterhood ; the improvement of hospitals and the care 
of the sick; the reclamation of prisoners, especially in female 
prisons; and in general, the genial ministrations of refined and 
cultured womanhood, wherever these ministrations can bring 
calmness, peace and comfort. Wherever there is sc>rrow, suffering, 
or sin, in our own or in other lands, these heaven-appointed 
Sisters of Charity will find their mission and their work. 

Glorious indeed will be the results of such labors of love and 
Christian charity. Society will be purified and elevated; giant 
evils which have so long thwarted human progress, overthrown ; 
the strongholds of sin, captured and destroyed by the might of 
truth, and the "new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness," so 



94 

long foretold by patriarch, prophet, and apostle, become a welcome 
and enduring reality. 

And they Avho have wrought this good work, as, one after 
another, they lay down the garments of their earthly toil to assume 
the glistening robes of the angels, shall find, as did Enoch of old, 
that those who walk with God, shall be spared the agonies of 
death and translated peacefully and joyfully to the mansions of 
their heavenly home, while waiting choirs of the blessed ones 
shall hail their advent to the transcendent glories of the world 
above. 



PART I. 



SUPERINTENDENT OF NURSES. 



DOROTHEA L. DIX. 




MONG all the women who devoted themselves with 
untmng energy^ and gave talents of the highest order 
to the work of caring for our soldiers during the w^ar, 
the name of Dorothea L. Dix will ahvays take the first 
rank, and history will undoubtedly preserve it long after all 
others have sunk into oblivion. This her extraordinary and ex- 
ceptional official position will secure. Others have doubtless 
done as excellent a work^ and earned a praise equal to her own, 
but her relations it) the government will insure her historical 
mention and remembrance, while none Avill doubt the sincerity of 
her patriotism, or the faithfulness of her devotion. 

Dorothea L. Dix is a native of Worcester, Mass. Her father 
was a physician, who died while she was as yet young, leaving 
her almost without pecuniary resources. 

Soon after this event, she proceeded to Boston, where she 
opened a select school for young ladies, from the income of which 
she was enabled to draw a comfortable support. 

One day during her residence ijj Boston, while passing along a 
street, she accidentally overheard two gentlemen, who were walking 
before her, conversing about the state prison at Charlestown, and 
expressing their sorrow at the jieglected condition of the convicts. 
They were undoubtedly of that class of philanthropists who believe 
that no man, however vile, is all bad, but, though sunk into the 
lowest depths of vice, has yet in his soul some white spot which 

13 97 



98 



the taint has not reached, but which some kind hand may reach, 
and some kind heart may touch. 

Be that as it may, their remarks found an answering chord in 
the heart of Miss Dix. She was powerfully affected and im- 
])ressed, so much so, that she obtained no rest until she had her- 
self visited the prison, and learned that in what she had heard 
there was no exaggeration. She found great suffering, and great 
need of reform. 

Energetic of character, and kindly of heart, she at once lent 
herself to the work of elevating and instructing the degraded and 
suffering classes she found there, and becoming deeply interested 
in the welfare of these unfortunates, she continued to employ her- 
self in labors pertaining to this field of reform, until the year 
1834. 

At that time her health becoming greatly impaired, she gave 
up her school and embarked for Europe. Shortly before this 
period, she had inherited from a relative sufficient property to 
render her independent of daily exertion for support, and to 
enable her to carry out any plans of charitaible work which she 
should form. Like all persons firmly fixed in an idea which 
commends itself alike to the judgment and the impulses, she was 
very tenacious of her opinions relating to it, and impatient of 
opposition. It is said that from this cause she did not always 
meet the respect and attention which the important objects to 
which she was devoting her life would seem to merit. That she 
found friends and helpers however at home and abroad, is un- 
doubtedly true. 

She remained abroad until the year 1837, when returning to 
her native country she devoted herself to the investigation of the 
condition of paupers, lunatics and prisoners. In this work she 
was warmly aided and encouraged by her friend and pastor the 
Rev. Dr. Channing, of whose children she had been governess, 
as well as by many other persons whose hearts beat a chord 
responsive to that long since awakened in her own. 



DOROTHEA L. DIX. 99 

Since 1841 until the breaking out of the late war^.Miss Dix 
devoted herself to the great work which she accepted as the spe-. 
cial mission of her life. In pursuance of it, she, during that 
time, is said to have visited every State of the Union east of the 
Rocky Mountains, examining prisons, poor-houses, lunatic asy- 
lums, and endeavoring to persuade legislatures 'and influential 
individuals to take measures for the relief of the poor an<J 
wretched. 

Her exertions contributed greatly to the foundation of State 
lunatic asylums in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New York, 
Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana and ISTorth Carolina. She presented 
a memorial to Congress during the Session of 1848-9, asking an 
approjy;iation of five hundred thousand acres of the public lands 
to endow hospitals foi*" the indigent insane. 

This measure failed, but, not discouraged, she renewed the 
appeal in 1850 asking for ten millions of acres. The Committee 
of the House to whom the memorial was referred, made a favor- 
able report, and a bill such as she asked for passed the House, 
but failed in the Senate for want of time. In April, 1854, how- 
ever, her unwearied exertions were rewarded by the passage of a 
bill by both houses, appropriating ten millions of acres to the 
several States for the relief of the indigent insane. But this bill 
was vetoed by President Pierce, chiefly on the ground that the 
General Government had no constitutional power to make such 
appropriations. 

Miss Dix Avas thus unexpectedly checked and deeply disap- 
pointed in the immediate accomplishment of this branch of the 
great work of benevolence to which she had more particularly 
devoted herself. 

From that time she seems to have given herself, with added 
zeal, to her labors for the insane. This class so helpless, and so 
innocently suifering, seem to have always been, and more parti- 
cularly during the later years of her work, peculiarly the object 
of her sympathies and labors. In the prosecution of these labors 



100 woman's work in the civil war. 

she made .another voyage to Europe in 1858 or '59, and continued 
, to pursue them Avith indefatigable zeal and devotion. 

The labors of Miss Dix for the insane were continued without^ 
intermission until the occurrence of those startling events which 
at once turned into other and new channels nearly all the indus- 
tries and philanthropies of our nation. With many a premonition, 
and many a muttering of the coming storm, unheeded, our people, 
inured to peace, continued unappalled in their quiet pursuits. 
But while the actual commencement of active hostilities called 
thousands of men to arms, from the monotony of mechanical, 
agricultural and commercial pursuits and the professions, it 
changed as well the thoughts and avocations of those who were 
not to enter the ranks of the military. . 

And not to men alone did these changes come. Not they alone 
were filled with a new fire of patriotism, and a quickened devo- 
tion to the interests of our nation. Scarcely had the ear ceased 
thrilling with the tidings that our country was indeed the theatre 
of civil war, when women as well as men began to inquire if there 
were not for them some part to be played in this great drama. 

Almost, if not quite the first among these was Miss Dix. Self- 
reliant, accustomed to rapid and independent action, conscious of 
her ability for usefulness, with her to resolve was to act. Scarcely 
had the first regiments gone forward to the defense of our menaced 
capital, when she followed, full of a patriotic desire to offer to her 
country whatever service a woman could perform in this horn' of 
its need, and determined that it should be given. 

She passed through Baltimore shortly after that fair city had 
covered itself with the indelible disgrace of the 16th of April, 
1861, and on her arrival at Washington, the first labor she oifered 
on her country's altar, was the nursing of some wounded soldiers, 
victims of the Baltimore mob. Thus was she earliest in the 
field. 

Washington became a great camp. Every one was willing, 
nay anxious, to be useful and employed. Military hospitals were 



DOROTHEA L. DIX. 101 

hastily organized. There were many sick^ but few skilful nurses. 
The opening of the rebellion had not found the government, nor 
the loyal people prepared for it. All was confusion, w^ant of dis- 
cipline, and disorder. Organizing minds, persons of executive 
ability, leaders, were wanted. 

Tlie services of women could be made available in the hospitals. 
They were needed as nurses, but it was equally necessary that some 
one should decide upon their qualifications for the task, and direct 
their efforts. 

Miss Dix was present in Washington. Her ability, long expe- 
rience in public institutions and high character were well known. 
Scores of persons of influence, from all parts of the country, could 
vouch for her, and she had already offered her services to the 
authorities for any work in which they could be made available. 

Her selection for the important post of Superintendent of 
Female Nurses, by Secretary Cameron, then at the head of the 
War Department, on the 10th of June, 1861, commanded univer- 
sal approbation. 

This at once opened for her a wide and most important field of 
duty and labor. Except hospital matrons,* all women regularly 
employed in the hospitals, and entitled to pay from the Govern- 
ment, were appointed by her. An examination of the qualifica- 
tions of each applicant was made. A woman must be mature in 
years, plain almost to homeliness in dress, and by no means libe- 
rally endowed with personal attractions, if she hoped to meet the 
approval of Miss Dix. Good health and an unexceptionable moral 
character were always insisted on. As the war progressed, the 
applications were numerous, and the need of this kiiid of service 
great, but the rigid scrutiny first adopted by Miss Dix continued, 
and many were rejected who did not in all respects possess the 
qualifications which she had fixed as her standard. Some of 
these women, who in other branches of the service, and under 



In iiianj instances she ajipointed these also. 



102 i\ Oman's work in the civil war. 

other an4.)i(;es, became eminently useful, were rejected on account 
of their youth; while some, alas! were received, who afterwards 
proved themselves quite unfit for the position, and a disgrace to 
their sex. 

But in these matters no blame can attach to Miss Dix. In the 
first instance she acted no doubt from the dictates of a sound and 
mature judgment; and in the last was often deceived by false tes- 
timonials, by a specious appearance, or by applicants who, inno- 
cent at tlie time, were not proof against the temptations and 
allurements of a position which all must admit to be peculiarly 
exposed and unsafe. 

Besides the appointment of nurses the position of Miss Dix 
imposed upon her numerous and onerous duties. She visited 
hospitals, far and near, inquiring into the wants of their occu- 
pants, in all cases where possible, supplementing the Government 
stores by those with which she was always supplied by private 
benevolence, or from public sources; she adjusted disputes, and 
settled difficulties in which her nurses were concerned; and in 
every way showed her true and untiring devotion to her country, 
and its suffering defenders. She undertook long journeys by 
land and by water, and seemed ubiquitous, for she was seldom 
missed from her office in Washington, yet was often seen else- 
where, and always bent upon the same fixed and earnest purpose. 
We cannot, perhaps, better describe the personal appearance of 
^liss Dix, and give an idea of her varied duties and many sacri- 
fices, than by transcribing the following extract from the printed 
correspondence of a lady, herself an active and most efficient 
laborer in the same general field of effort, and holding an import- 
ant position in the Northwestern Sanitary Commission. 

^^It was Sunday morning when we arrived in Washington, 
and as the Sanitary Commission held no meeting that day, we 
decided after breakfast to pay a visit to Miss Dix. 

" We fortunately found the good lady at home, but just ready 
to start for the hospitals. She is slight and delicate looking, and 



DOEOTHEA L. DIX. 103 

seems physically inadequate to the work she is engaged in. In 
her youth she must have possessed considerable beauty, and she 
is still very comely, with a soft and musical voice, graceful figure, 
and very winning manners. Secretary Cameron vested her with 
sole power to appoint female nurses in the hospitals. Secretary 
Stanton, on succeeding him ratified the appointment, and she has 
installed several hundreds of nurses in this noble work — all of 
them Protestants, and middle-aged. Miss Dix^s whole soul is in 
this work. She rents two large houses, which are depots for 
sanitary supplies sent to her care, and houses of rest and refresh- 
ment for nurses and convalescent soldiers, employs two secretaries, 
owns ambulances and keeps them busily employed, prints and 
distributes circulars, goes hither and thither from one remote 
point to another in her visitations of hospitals, — and pays all the 
expenses incurred from her private purse. Her fortune, time and 
strength are laid on the altar of the country in this hour of trial. 

" Unfortunately, many of the surgeons in the hospitals do not 
work harmoniously with ^liss Dix. They are jealous of her 
power, impatient of her authority, find fault with her nurses, and 
accuse her of being arbitrary, opinionated, severe and capricious. 
Many to rid themselves of her entirely, have obtained permission 
of Surgeon-General Hammond to employ Sisters of Charity in 
their hospitals, a proceeding not to Miss Dix's liking. Knowing 
by observation that many of the surgeons are wholly unfit for 
their office, that too often they fail to bring skill, morality, or 
humanity to their work, we could easily understand how this 
single-hearted, devoted, tireless friend of the sick and wounded 
soldier would come in collision with these laggards, and we liked 
her none the less for it." 

Though Miss Dix received no salary, devoting to the work her 
time and labors without remuneration, a large amount of supplies 
were placed in her hands, both by the Government and from 
private sources, which she was always ready to dispense with 
judgment and caution, it is true, but with a pleasant earnestness 



104 

alike grateful to the recipient of the kindness, or to the agent 
who acted in her stead in this work of mercy. 

It was perhaps unfortunate for Miss Dix that at the time when 
she received her appointment it was so unprecedented, and the 
entire service was still in such a chaotic state, that it was simply 
impossible to define her duties or her authority. As, therefore, 
no plan of action or rules were adopted, she was forced to abide 
exclusively by her own ideas of need and authority. In a letter 
to the writer, from an official source, her position and the changes 
that became necessary are thus explained : 

"The appointment of nurses was regulated by her ideas of 
their prospective usefulness, good moral character being an abso- 
lute prerequisite. This absence of system, and independence of 
action, worked so very unsatisfactorily, that in October, 1863, a 
General Ord^r was issued placing the assignment, or employment 
of female nurses, exclusively under control of Medical Officers, 
and limiting the superintendency to a ^certificate of approval,' 
without which no woman nurse could be employed, except by 
order of the Surgeon-General. This materially reduced the num- 
ber of appointments, secured the muster and pay of those in 
service, and established discipline and order.'' 

The following is the General Order above alluded to. 

GENERAL ORDERS, No. 351. 

War Department, Adjutant-General's Office, 
Washington, Oeioher 29, 1868. 
The employment of women nurses in the United States General Hospitals 
will in future be strictly governed by the following rules : 

1. Persons approved by Miss Dix, or her authorized agents, will receive from 
her, or them, "certificates of approval," which must be countersigned by 
Medical Directors upon their assignment to duty as nurses within their Depart- 
ments. 

2. Assignments of "women nurses" to duty in General Hospitals will only 
be made upon application by the Surgeons in charge, through Medical Direc- 
tors, to Miss Dix or her agents, for the number they require, not exceeding one 
to every thirty beds. 



DOROTHEA L. DTX. 105 

3. No females, except Tlospital Matrons, will be employed in General 
Hospitals, or, after December 31, 1863, born upon the Muster and Pay Kolls, 
without sucb certificates of approval and regular assignment, unless specially 
appointed by the Surgeon-General. 

4. Women nurses, while on duty in General Hospitals, are under the exclu- 
sive control of the senior medical officer, Avho will direct their several duties, 
and may be discharged by him when considered supernumerary, or for incom- 
petency, insubordination, or violation of his orders. Such discharge, with the 
reasons therefor, being endorsed upon the certificate, will be at once returned 
to Miss Dix. 

By oeder of the Secretaey of "War : 

e. d. townsend, 
Assistant Adjutant- General. 
Official : 

By this Order the authority of Miss Dix was better defined, but 
she continued to labor under the same difficulty which had from 
the first clogged her efforts. Authority had. been bestowed upon 
her, but not the power to enforce obedience. There was no pen- 
alty for disobedience, and persons disaffected, forgetful, or idle, 
might refuse or neglect to obey with impunity. It will at once 
be seen that this fact must have resulted disastrously upon her 
efforts. She doubtless had enemies (as who has not)? and some 
were jealous of the power and prominence of her position, while 
many might even feel unwilling, under any circumstances, to ac- 
knowledge, and yield to the authority of a woman. Added to 
this she had, in some cases, and probably without any fault on 
her part, failed to secure the confidence and respect of the sur- 
geons in charge of hospitals. In these facts lay the sources of 
trials, discouragements, and difficulties, all to be met, struggled 
with, and, if possible, triumphed over by a woman, standing 
quite alone in a most responsible, laborious, and exceptional 
position. It indeed seems most wonderful — almost miraculous — 
that under such circumstances, such a vast amount of good was 
accomplished. Had she not accomplished half so much, she still 
would richly have deserved that higliest of plaudits — Well done 
good and faithful servant! 

14 



106 woman's work in the civil war. 

Miss Dix has one remarkable peculiarity — undoubtedly re- 
markable in one of her sex which is said, and with truth — to 
possess great approbativeness. She does not apparently desire 
fame, she does not enjoy being talked about, even in praise. The 
approval of her own conscience, the consciousness of performing 
an unique and useful work, seems quite to suffice her. Few 
women are so self-reliant, self-sustained, self-centered. And in 
saying this we but echo the sentiments, if not the words, of an 
eminent divine who, like herself, was during the whole war de- 
voted to a work similar in its purpose, and alike responsible and 
arduous. 

^' She (Miss Dix) is a lady who likes to do things and not have 
them talked about. She is freer from the love of public reputa- 
tion than any woman I know. Then her plans are so strictly 
her own, and always so wholly controlled by her own individual 
genius and power, that they cannot well be participated in by 
others, and not much understood. 

" Miss Dix, I suspect, was as early m, as long employed, and 
as self-sacrificing as any woman who offered her services to the 
country. She gave herself — body, soul and substance — to the 
good work. I wish we had any record of her work, but we have 
not. 

" I should not dare to speak for her — about her work — except 
to say that it was extended, patient and persistent beyond any- 
thing I know of, dependent on a single-handed effort." 

All the testimony goes to show that Miss Dix is a woman en- 
dowed with warm feelings and great kindness of heart. It is 
only those who do not know her, or who have only met her in 
the conflict of opposing wills, who pronounce her, as some have 
done, a cold and heartless egotist. Opinionated she may be, 
becavise convinced of the general soundness of her ideas, and infal- 
libility of her judgment. If the success of great designs, under- 
taken and carried through single-handed, furnish warrant for such 
conviction, she has an undoubted right to hold it. 



DOROTHEA L. DIX. 107 

Her nature is large and generous, yet with no room for narrow 
grudges^ or mean reservations. As a proof of this, her stores^ 
were as readily dispensed for the use of a hospital in which the 
surgeon refused and rejected her nurses, as for those who employed 
them. 

She had the kindest care and oversight over the women she 
had commissioned. She wished them to embrace every opportu- 
nity for the rest and refreshment rendered necessary by their 
arduous labors. A home for them was established by her in 
Washington, which at all times opened its doors for their recep- 
tion, and where she wished them to enjoy that perfect quiet and 
freedom from care, during their occasional sojourns, which were 
the best remedies for their weariness and exhaustion of body and 
soul. 

In her more youthful days Miss Dix devoted herself consider- 
ably to literary pursuits. She has published several works ano- 
nymously — the first of which — ^^ The Garland of Flora,^' was 
published in Boston in 1829. This was succeeded by a number 
of books for children, among Avhich were " Conversations about 
Common Things," "Alice and Ruth," and "Evening Hours." 
She has also published a variety of tracts for prisoners, and has 
written many memorials to legislative bodies on the subject of the 
foundation and conducting of Lunatic Asylums. 

Miss Dix is gifted with a singularly gentle and persuasive 
voice, and her manners are said to exert a remarkably controlling 
influence over the fiercest maniacs. 

She is exceedingly quiet and retiring in her deportment, delicate 
and refined in manner, with great sweetness of expression. She 
is far from realizing the popular idea of the stroug-minded wo- 
man — loud, boisterous and uncouth, claiming as a right, what 
might, perhaps, be more readily obtained as a courteous conces- 
sion. On the contrary, her successes with legislatures and indi- 
viduals, are obtained by the mildest efforts, which yet lack nothing 
of persistence ; and few persons beholding this delicate and retir- 



108 woman's work in the civil war. 

ing woman would imagine they saw in her the champion of the 
oppressed and suffering classes. 

Miss Dix regards her army work but as an episode in her 
career. She did what she could, and with her devotion of self 
and high patriotism she would have done no less. She pursued 
her labors to the end, and her position was not resigned until 
many months after the close of the war. In fact, she tarried in 
Washington to finish many an uncompleted task, for some time 
after her office had been abolished. 

When all was done she returned at once to that which she 
considers her life's work, the amelioration of the condition of the 
insane. 

A large portion of the winter of 1865-6 was devoted to an 
attempt to induce the Legislature of New York to make better 
provision for the insane of that State, and to procure, or erect for 
them, several asylums of small size where a limited number under 
the care of experienced physicians, might enjoy greater facilities 
for a cure, and a better prospect of a return to the pursuits and 
pleasures of life. 

Miss Dix now resides at Trenton, New Jersey, where she has 
since the war fixed her abode, travelling thence to the various 
scenes of her labors. Wherever she may be, and however 
engaged, we may be assured that her object is the good of some 
portion of the race, and is worthy of the prayers and blessings of 
all who love humanity and seek the promotion of its best inte- 
rests. And to the close of her long and useful life, the thanks, 
the heartfelt gratitude of every citizen of our common country so 
deeply indebted to her, and to the many devoted and self-sacri- 
ficing women whose efforts she directed, must as assuredly follow 
her. She belongs now to History, and America may proudly 
claim her daughter. 



PART II 



LADIES WHO MINISTERED TO THE SICK AND WOUNDED IN CAMP, 
FIELD AND GENERAL HOSPITALS. 



CLARA HARLOWE BARTON.* 




F those Avhom the first blast of the war trump roused 
and called to lives of patriotic devotion and philan- 
thropic endeavor, some were led instinctively to asso- 
ciated labor, and found their zeal inflamed, their 
patriotic efforts cheered and encouraged by communion witli those 
who were like-minded. To these the organizations of the Sol- 
diers' Aid Societies and of the Sanitary and Christian Commissions 
were a necessity; they provided a place and way for the exercise 
and development of those capacities for noble and heroic endeavor, 
and generous self-sacrifice, so gloriously manifested by many of 
our American women, and which it has given us so much pleasure 
to record in these pages. 

But there were others endowed by their Creator with greater 
independence of character and higher executive powers, who while 
not less modest and retiring in disposition than their sisters, yet 
preferred to mark out their own career, and pursue a compara- 
tively independent course. They worked harmoniously with the 
various sanitary and other organizations when brought into con- 
tact with them, but their work was essentially distinct from them, 
and was pursued without interfering in any way with that of 
others. 



* In the preparation of this sketch of Miss Barton, we have availed ourselves, 
as far as practicable, of a paper prepared for us by a clerical friend of the lady, 
who had known her from childhood. The passages from this paper are indi- 
cated by quotation marks. 

Ill 



112 woman's work in the civil war. 

To this latter class pre-eminently belongs Miss Clara Harlowe 
Barton. 

Quiet, modest, and unassuming in manner and appearance, 
there is beneath this quiet exterior an intense energy, a compre- 
hensive intellect, a resolute will, and an executive force, which is 
found in few of the stronger sex, and which mingled with the 
tenderness and grace of refined womanhood eminently qualifies 
her to become an independent power. 

Miss Barton was born in North Oxford, Worcester County, 
Massachusetts. Her father, Stephen Barton, Sr., was a man 
highly esteemed in the community in which he dwelt, and by 
which his worth was most thoroughly known. In early youth 
he had served as a soldier in the West under General Wayne, 
the " Mad Anthony " of the early days of the Republic, and his 
boyish eyes had witnessed the evacuation of Detroit by the British 
in 1796. "His military training may have contributed to the 
sterling uprightness, the inflexible will, and the devotion to law 
and order and rightful authority for which he was distinguished.^' 
The little Clara was the youngest by several years in a family of 
two brothers and three sisters. She was early taught that pri- 
meval benediction, miscalled a curse, which requires mankind to 
earn their bread. Besides domestic duties and a very thorough 
public school training she learned the general rules of business 
by acting as clerk and book-keeper for her eldest brother. Next 
she betook herself to the district school, the usual stepping-stone 
for all aspiring men and women in New England. She taught 
for several years, commencing when very young, in various places 
in Massachusetts and New Jersey. The large circle of friends 
thus formed was not without its influence in determining her 
military career. So many of her pupils volunteered in the first 
years of the war that at the second battle of Bull Run she found 
seven of them, each of whom had lost an arm or a leg. 

"One example will show her character as a teacher. She went 
to Bordentown, N. J., in 1853, where there was not, and never 



CLAEA HARLOWE BAET<J]S^. 113 

had been^ a public school. Three or four unsuccessful attempts 
had been made, and the idea had been abandoned as not adapted 
to that latitude. The brightest boys in the town ran untaught in 
the streets. She offered to teach a free school for three months at 
her own expense, to convince the citizens that it could be done ; 
and she was laughed at as a visionary. Six weeks of waiting and 
debating induced the authorities to fit up an unoccupied building 
at a little distance from the town. She commenced with six out- 
cast boys, and in five weeks the house would not hold the number 
that came. The commissioners, at her instance, erected the pre- 
sent school-building of Bordentown, a three-story brick building, 
costing four thousand dollars; and there, in the winter of 1853-4, 
she organized the city free-school with a roll of six hundred 
pupils. But the severe labor, and the great amount of loud 
speaking required, in the newly plastered rooms, injured her 
health, and for a time deprived her of her voice — the prime agent 
of instruction. Being unable to teach, she left New Jersey about 
the 1st of March, 1854, seeking rest and a milder climate, and 
went as far south as Washington. While tliere, a friend and 
distant relative, then in Congress, voluntarily obtained for her an 
appointment in the Patent Office, where she continued until the 
fall of 1857. She was employed at first as a copyist, and after- 
wards in the more responsible work of abridging original papers, 
and preparing records for publication. As she was an excellent 
chirographer, with a clear head for business, and was paid by the 
piece and not by the month, she made money fast, as matters were 
then reckoned, and she was very liberal with it. I met her often 
during those years, as I have since and rarely saw her without 
some pet scheme of benevolence on her hands which she pursued 
with an enthusiasm that was quite heroic, and sometimes amu- 
sing. The roll of those she has helped, or tried to help, with her 
purse, her personal influence or her counsels, would be a long one; 
orphan children, deserted wives, destitute women, sick or unsuc- 
cessful relatives, men who had failed in business, and boys who 

16 



114 

never had any business — all who were in want, or in trouble, and 
could claim the slightest acquaintance, came to her for aid and 
were never repulsed. • Strange it was to see this generous girl, 
whose own hands ministered to all her ^^ants, always giving to 
those around her, instead of receiving, strenp-thening the hands 
and directing the steps of so many who would have seemed better 
calculated to help her. She must have had a native genius for 
nursing ; for in her twelfth year she was selected as the special 
attendant of a sick brother, and remained in his chamber by day 
and by night for two years, with only a respite of one half-day in 
all that time. Think, O reader! of a little girl in short dresses 
and pantalettes, neither going to school nor to play, but impri- 
soned for years in the deadly air of a sick room, and made to feel, 
every moment, that a brother's life depended on her vigilance. 
Then followed a still longer period of sickness and feebleness on 
her own part; and from that time to the present, sickness, danger 
and death have been always near her, till they have grown fami- 
liar as playmates, and she has come to understand all the wants 
and ways and waywardness of the sick; has learned to anticipate 
their wishes and cheat them of their fears. Those who have been 
under her immediate care, will understand me when I say there 
is healing in the touch of her hand, and anodyne in the low 
melody of her voice. In the first year of Mr. Buchanan's admin- 
istration she was hustled out of the Patent Office on a suspicion 
of anti-slavery sentiments. She returned to New England, and 
devoted her time to study and works of benevolence. In the winter 
follo^dng the election of Mr. Lincoln, she returned to Washington 
at the solicitation of her friends there, and would doubtless have 
been reinstated if peace had been maintained. I happened to see 
her a day or two after the news came that Fort Sumter had been 
fired on. She was confident, even enthusiastic. She had feared 
that the Southern aristocracy, by their close combination and 
superior political training, might succeed in gradually subjugating 
the whole country ; but of that there was no longer any danger. 



CLARA HARLOW E BARTON. 115 

The war might be long and bloody, but the rebels had volun- 
tarily abandoned a policy in Avhich the chances were in favor of 
their ultimate success, for one in which they had no chance at all. 
For herself, she had saved a little in time of peace, and she in- 
tended to devote it and herself to the service of her country and 
of humanity. If war must be, she neither expected nor desired to 
come out of it with a dollar. If she survived, she could no doubt 
earn a living; and if she did not, it was no matter. This is 
actually the substance of what she said, and pretty nearly the 
words — without appearing to suspect that it was remarkable." 

Three days after Major Anderson had lowered his flag in 
Charleston Harbor, the Sixth Massachusetts Militia started for 
Washington. Their passage through Baltimore, on the 19th 
of April, 1861, is a remarkable point in our national, his- 
tory. The next day about thirty of the sick and wounded 
were placed in the Washington Infirmary, where the Judiciary 
Square Hospital now stands. Miss Barton proceeded promptly 
to the spot to ascertain their condition and afford such voluntary 
relief as might be in her power. Hence, if she was not the first 
person in the country in this noble work, no one could have been 
more than a few hours before her. The regiment was quartered 
at the Capitol, and as those early volunteers will remember, 
troops on their first arrival were often very poorly provided for. 
The 21st of April happened to be Sunday. No omnibuses ran 
that day, and street cars as yet were not ; so she hired five colored 
persons, loaded them with baskets of ready prepared food, and 
proceeded to the Capitol. The freight they bore served as coun- 
tersign and pass ; she entered the Senate Chamber, and distributed 
her welcome store. Many of the soldiers were from her own 
neighborhood, and as they thronged around her, she stood upon 
the steps to the Vice President's chair and read to them from a 
paper she had brought, the first written history of their departure 
and their journey. These two days were the first small begin- 
nings of her military experience, — steps which naturally led to 



116 woman's work in the civil war. 

mncli else. Men wrote home their own impressions of what they 
saw ; and her acts found ready reporters. Young soldiers whom 
she had taught or known as boys a few years before, called to see 
her on their way to the front. Troops were gathering rapidly, 
and hospitals — the inevitable shadows of armies — ^^vere springing 
up and getting filled. Daily she visited them, bringing to the 
sick news, and delicacies and comforts of her own procuring, and 
writing letters for those who could not write themselves. Mo- 
thers and sisters heard of her, and begged her to visit this one 
and that, committing to her care letters, socks, jellies and the 
like. Her work and its fame grew week by week, and soon her 
room, for she generally had but one, became sadly encumbered 
with boxes, and barrels and baskets, of the most varied contents. 
Through the summer of 1862, the constant stock she had on 
hand averaged about five tons. The goods were mainly th^ con- 
tributions of liberal individuals, churches and sewing-circles to 
whom she was personally known. But, although articles of 
clothing, lint, bandages, cordials, preserved fruits, liquors, and 
the like might be sent, there was always much which she had to 
buy herself. 

During this period as in her subsequent labors, she neither 
sought or received recognition by any department of the Govern- 
ment, by which I mean only that she had no acknowledged posi- 
tion, rank, rights or duties, was not employed, paid, or compensated 
in any way, had authority over no one, and was subject to no one's 
orders. She was simply an American lady, mistress of herself 
and of no one else ; free to stay at home, if she had a home, and 
equally free to go where she pleased, if she could procure pass- 
ports and transportation, which was not always an easy matter. 
From many individual officers, she received most valuable en- 
couragement and assistance ; from none more than from General 
Rucker, the excellent Chief Quartermaster at Washington. He 
furnished her storage for her supplies when necessary, transpor- 
tation for herself and them, and added to her stores valuable 



CLARA HAELOWE BARTON. 117 

contributions at times when they were most wanted. She herself 
declares, with generous exaggeration, that if she has ever done 
any good, it has been due to the watchful care and kindness of 
General Rucker. 

About the close of 1861, Miss Barton returned to Massachu- 
setts to watch over the declining health of her father, now in his 
eighty-eighth year, and failing fast. In the following March she 
placed his remains in the little cemetery at Oxford, and then 
returned to Washington and to her former labors. But, as the 
spring and summer campaigns progressed, Washington ceased to 
be the best field for the philanthropist. In the hospitals of the 
Capitol the sick and wounded found shelter, food and attendance. 
Private generosity now centered there; and the United States 
Sanitary Commission had its office and officers there to minister 
to the thousand exceptional wants not provided for by the Army 
Regulations. There were other fields where the harvest was 
plenteous and the laborers few. Yet could she as a young and 
not unattractive lady, go with safety and propriety among a 
hundred thousand armed men, and tell them that no one had 
sent her? She would encounter rough soldiers, and camp-fol- 
lowers of every nation, and officers of all grades of character ; 
and could she bear herself so wisely and loftily in all trials as to 
awe the impertinent, and command the respect of the supercil- 
ious, so that she might be free to come and go at her will, and do 
what should seem good to her ? Or, if she failed to maintain a 
character proof against even inuendoes, would she not break the 
bridge over which any successor would have to pass? These 
questions she pondered, and prayed and wept over for months, 
and has spoken of the mental conflict as the most trying one of 
her life. She had foreseen and told all these fears to her father ; 
and the old man, on his death-bed, advised her to go wherever 
she felt it a duty to go. He reminded her that he himself had 
been a soldier, and said that all true soldiers would respect her. 
He was naturally a man of great benevolence, a member of the 



118 

Masonic fraternity, of the Degree of Eoyal Arch Mason; and 
in his last days he spoke much of the pui^poses and noble 
charities of the Order. She had herself received the initiation 
accorded to daughters of Royal Ai'ch JMasons, and wore on her 
bosom a Masonic emblem, by which she was easily recognized by 
the brotherhood, and which subsequently proved a valuable 
talisman. At last she reached the conclusion that it was right 
for her to go amid the actual tumult of battle and shock of 
armies. And the fact that she has moved and labored with the 
principal armies in the North and in the South for two years and 
a half, and that now no one who knows her would speak of her 
without the most profound respect, proves two things — ^that there 
may be heroism of the highest order in American women — and 
that American armies are not to be judged of, by the recorded 
statements concerning European ones. 

Her first tentative efforts at going to the field were cautious and 
beset with difiiculties. Through the long Peninsula campaign as 
each transport brought its load of suffering men, with the mud 
of the Chickahominy and the gore of battle baked hard upon 
them like the shells of turtles, she went down each day to the 
wharves with an ambulance laden with dressings and restoratives, 
and there amid the tm-moil and dirt, and under the torrid sun of 
Washington, toiled day by day, alleviating such suffering as she 
could. And when the steamers tm-ned their prows doAvn the 
river, she looked wistfully after them, longing to go to those dread 
shores whence all this misery came. But she was alone and un- 
known, and how could she get the means and the permission to 
go ? The military authorities were overworked in those days and 
plagued mth unreasonable applications, and as a class are not 
very indulgent to unusual requests. The first officer of rank who 
gave her a kind answer was a man who never gave an unkind 
reply without great provocation — Dr. R. H. Coolidge, Medical 
Inspector. Through him a pass was obtained from Surgeon- 
General Hammond, and she was referred to Major Rucker, Quar- 



CLAEA HAELOWE BARTON. 119 

termaster, for transportation. The Major listened to lier story so 
patiently and kindly that she was overcome, and sat doAvn and 
wept. It was then too late in the season to go to McClellan's 
army, so she loaded a railroad car with supplies and started for 
Culpepper Court-House, then crowded with the wounded from 
the battle of Cedar Mountain. With a similar car-load she Avas 
the lirst of the volunteer aid that reached Fairfax Station at the 
cl )se of the disastrous days that culminated in the second Bull 
Run, and the battle of Chantilly. On these two expeditions, and 
one to Fredericksburg, Miss Barton was accompanied by friends, 
at least one gentleman and a lady in each case, but at last a time 
came, when through the absence or engagements of these, she 
mUvSt go alone or not at all. 

On Sunday, the 14th of September, 1862, she loaded an army 
wagon with supplies and started to follow the march of General 
McClellan. Her only companions were Mr. Cornelius M. Welles, 
the teacher of the first contraband school in the District of Colum- 
bia — a young man of rare talent and devotion — and one teamster." 
She travelled three days along the dusty roads of Maryland, 
buying bread as she went to the extent of her means of convey- 
ance, and sleeping in the wagon by night. After dark, on the 
night of the sixteenth, she reached Burnside's Corps, and found 
the two armies lying face to face along the opposing ridges of hills 
that bound the valley of the Antietam. There had already been 
heavy skirmishing far aAvay on the right Avhere Hooker had 
forded the creek and taken position on the opposite hills ; and 
the air was dark and thick Avith fog and exhalations, Avith the 
smoke of camp-fires and premonitory death. There Avas little 
sleep that night, and as the morning sun rose bright and beautiful 
over the Blue Ridge and dipped doAvn into the Valley, the firing 
on the right was resumed. Reinforcements soon began to move 
along the rear to Hooker's support. Thinking the place of dan- 
ger Avas the place of duty, Miss Barton ordered her mules to be 
harnessed and took her place in the SA\dft train of artillery that 



120 woman's work in the civil wae. 

was passing. On reaching the scene of action ^ they turned into 
a field of tall corn, and drove through it to a large barn. They 
were close upon the line of battle ; the rebel shot and shell flew 
thickly around and over them ; and in the barn-yard and among 
the corn lay torn and bleeding men — the worst cases — just 
brought from the places where they had fallen. The army medi- 
cal supplies had not yet arrived, the small stock of dressings was 
exhausted, and the surgeons were trying to make bandages of 
corn-husks. Miss Barton opened to them her stock of dressings, 
and proceeded with her companions to distribute bread steeped in 
wine to the wounded and fainting. In the course of the day she 
picked up tAventy-five men who had come to the rear with the 
wounded, and set them to work administering restoratives, bring- 
ing and applying water, lifting men to easier positions, stopping 
hemorrhages, etc., etc. At length her bread was all spent ; but 
luckily a part of the liquors she had brought were found to have 
been packed in meal, which suggested the idea of making gruel. 
A farm-house was found connected with the barn, and on search- 
ing the cellar, she discovered three barrels of flour, and a bag 
of salt, which the rebels had hidden the day before. Kettles 
were found about the house, and she prepared to make gruel on a 
large scale, which was carried in buckets and distributed along 
the line for miles. On the ample piazza of the house were ranged 
the operating tables, where the surgeons performed their opera- 
tions ; and on that piazza she kept her place from the forenoon 
till nightMl, mixing gruel and directing her assistants, under the 
fire of one of the greatest and fiercest battles of modern times. 
Before night her face was as black as a negro's, and her lips and 
throat parched with the sulphurous smoke of battle. But night 
came at last, and the wearied armies lay down on the ground to 
rest ; and the dead and wounded lay everywhere. Darkness too 
had its terrors, and as the night closed in, the surgeon in charge 
at the old farm-house, 1 )oked despairingly at a bit of candle and 
said it was the only one on the place ; and no one could stir till 



CLARA HARLOWE BARTCW. 121 

morning. A thousand men dangerously wounded and siiifering 
terribly from thirst lay around, and many must die before the light 
of another day. It was a fearful thing to die alone and in the 
dark, and no one could move among the wounded, for fear of 
stumbling over them. Miss Barton replied, that, profiting by 
her experience at Chantilly, she had brought with her thirty lan- 
terns, and an abundance of candles. It was worth a journey to 
Antietam, to light the gloom of that night. On the morrow, the 
fighting had ceased, but the work of caring for the wounded was 
resumed and continued all day. On the third day the regular 
supplies arrived, and Miss Barton having exhausted her small 
stores, and finding that continued fatigue and watching were 
bringing on a fever, turned her course towards Washington. It 
was with difficulty that she was able to reach home, where she 
was confined to her bed for some time. When she recovered sufti- 
ciently to call on Colonel Rucker, and told him that with five 
wagons she could have taken supplies sufficient for the immediate 
wants of all the wounded in the battle, that officer shed tears, and 
charged her to ask for enough next time. 

It was about the 23d of October, when another great battle 
was expected, that she next set out with a well appointed and 
heavily laden train of six wagons and an ambulance, with seven 
teamsters, and thirty-eight mules. The men were rough fellows, 
little used or disposed to be commanded by a woman ; and they 
mutinied when they had gone but a few miles. A plain state- 
ment of the course she should pursue in case of insubordination, 
induced them to proceed and confine themselves, for the time 
being, to imprecations and grumbling. When she overtook the 
army, it was crossing the Potomac, below Harper's Ferry. Her 
men refused to cross. She offered them the alternative to go 
forward peaceably, or to be dismissed and replaced by soldiers. 
They chose the former, and from that day forward were all obedi- 
ence, fidelity and usefulness. The expected battle was not fought, 
but gave place to a race for Eichmond. The Army of the Poto- 

16 



122 

mac had the advantage in regard to distance, keeping for a time 
along the base of the Blue Eidge, while the enemy followed the 
course of the Shenandoah. There was naturally a skirmish at 
every gap. The rebels were generally the first to gain possession 
of the pass, from which they would attempt to surprise some 
part of the army that was passing, and capture a portion of our 
supply trains. Thus every day brought a battle or a skirmish, 
and its accession to the list of sick and wounded ; and for a period 
of about three weeks, until Warrenton Junction was reached, the 
national army had no base of operations, nor any reinforcements 
or supplies. The sick had to be carried all that time over the 
rough roads in wagons or ambulances. Miss Barton with her 
wagon train accompanied the Ninth Army Corps, as a general 
purveyor for the sick. Her original supply of comforts was very 
considerable, and her men contrived to add to it every day such 
fresh provisions as could be gathered from the country. At each 
night's encampment, they lighted their fires and prepared fresh 
food and necessaries for the moving hospital. Through all that 
long and painful march from Harper's Ferry to Fredericksburg, 
those wagons constituted the hospital larder and kitchen for all 
the sick within reach. 

It will be remembered that after Burnside assumed command 
of the Army of the Potomac, the route by Fredericksburg was 
selected, and the march was conducted down the left bank of the 
Rappahannock to a position opposite that city. From Warrenton 
Junction Miss Barton made a visit to Washington, while her 
wagons kept on with the army, which she rejoined with fresh 
supplies at Falmouth. She remained in camp until after the 
unsuccessful attack on the works behind Fredericksburg. She 
was on the bank of the river in front of the Lacy House, within 
easy rifle shot range of the enemy, at the time of the attack of 
the 11th December — witnessed the unavailing attempts to lay 
pontoon bridges directly into the city, and the heroic crossing of 
the 19th and 20th Massachusetts Regiments and the 7th Michi- 



CLARA HARLOWE BAETlN. 123 

gan. During the brief occupation of the city she remained in it, 
organizing the hospital kitchens ; and after the withdra^val of the 
troops, she established a private kitchen for supplying delicacies 
to the wounded. Although it was now winter and the weather 
inclement, she occupied an old tent while her train was encamped 
around ; and the cooking was performed in the open air. Y/hen 
the wounded from the attack on the rebel batteries were recovered 
by flag of truce, fifty of them w^ere brought to her camp at night. 
They had lain several days in the cold, and were wounded, fam- 
ished and frozen. She had the snow cleaned away, large fires 
built and the men wrapped in blankets. An old chimney was 
torn down, the bricks heated in the fire, and placed around them. 
As she believed that wounded men, exhausted and depressed by 
the loss of blood, required stimulants, and as Surgeon-General 
Hammond, with characteristic liberality had given her one hun- 
dred and thirty gallons of confiscated liquor, she gave them with 
warm food, enough strong hot toddy to make them all measurably 
drunk. The result was that they slept comfortably until morn- 
ing, when the medical officers took them in charge. It was her 
practice to administer a similar draught to each patient on his 
leaving for Acquia Creek, en route to the Washington hospitals. 

A circumstance which occurred during the battle of Fredericks- 
burg, will illustrate very strikingly the courage of Miss Barton, 
a courage which has never faltered in the presence of danger, 
when what she believed to be duty called. In the skirmishing 
of the 12th of December, the day preceding the great and disas- 
trous battle, a part of the Union troops had crossed over to 
Fredericksburg, and after a brief fight had driven back a body 
of rebels, wounding and capturing a number of them whom they 
sent as prisoners across the river to Falmouth, where Miss Barton 
as yet had her camp. The wounded rebels were brought to her 
for care and treatment. Among them was a young officer, mor- 
tally wounded by a shot in the thigh. Though she could not 
save his life, she ministered to him as well as she could, partially 



124 

staunching his wound, quenching his raging thirst, and endeavor- 
ing to make his condition as comfortable as possible. Just at this 
time, an orderly arrived with a message from the Medical 
Director of the Ninth Army Corps requesting her to come over 
to Fredericksburg, and organize the hospitals and diet kitchens 
for the corps. The wounded rebel officer heard the request, and 
beckoning to her, for he Avas too weak to speak aloud, he whis- 
pered a request that she would not go. She replied that she 
must do so ; that her duty to the corps to which she was attached 
required it. ^^Lady,^^ replied the wounded rebel, ^^you have been 
very kind to me. You could not save my life, but you have 
endeavored to render death easy. I owe it to you to tell you 
what a few hours ago I would have died sooner than have 
revealed. The whole arrangement of the Confederate troops and 
artillery is intended as a trap for your people. Every street and 
lane of the city is covered by our cannon. They are now con- 
cealed, and do not reply to the bombardment of your army, 
because they wish to entice you across. When your entire army 
has reached the other side of the Rappahannock and attempts to 
move along the streets, they will find Fredericksburg only a 
slaughter pen, and not a regiment of them will be allowed to 
escape. Do not go over, for you will go to certain death V^ While 
her tender sensibilities prevented her from adding to the suifering 
of the dying man, by not apparently heeding his warning. Miss 
Barton did not on account of it forego for an instant her intention 
of sharing the fortunes of the Ninth Corps on the other side of 
the river. The poor fellow was almost gone, and waiting only to 
close his eyes on all earthly objects, she crossed on the frail 
bridge, and was welcomed with cheers by the Ninth Corps, who 
looked upon her as their guardian angel. She remained w^ith 
them until the evening of their masterly retreat, and until the 
wounded men of the corps in the hospitals were all safely across. 
While she was in Fredericksburg, after the battle of the 13th, 
some soldiers of the corps who had been roving about the city, 



CLARA HARLOWE BARTON". 125 

came to her quarters bringing with great difficulty a large and 
very costly and elegant carpet. ^^ What is this for?^' asked Miss 
Barton. " It is for you, ma am/^ said one of the soldiers ; '' you 
have been so good to us, that we wanted to bring you something." 
"Where did you get it?" she asked. "Oh! ma^am, we confis- 
cated it," said the soldiers. "No! no!" said the lady; "that 
will never do. Governments confiscate. Soldiers when they 
take such things, steal. I am afraid, my men, you will have to 
take it back to the house from which you took it. I can't receive 
a stolen carpet." The men looked sheepish enough, but they 
shouldered the carpet and carried it back. In the wearisome 
weeks that followed the Fredericksburg disaster, when there was 
not the excitement of a coming battle, and the wounded whether 
detained in the hospitals around Falmouth or forwarded through 
the deep mud to the hospital transports on the Potomac, still with 
saddened countenances and depressed spirits looked forward to a 
dreary future. Miss Barton toiled on, infusing hope and cheer- 
fulness into sad hearts, and bringing the consolations of religion 
to her aid, pointed them to the only true source of hope and 
comfort. 

In the early days of April, 1863, Miss Barton went to the 
South with the expectation of being present at the combined land 
and naval attack on Charleston. She reached the wharf at 
Hilton Head on the afternoon of the 7th, in time to hear the 
crack of Sumter's guns as they opened in broadside on Dupont's 
fleet. That memorable assault accomplished nothing unless it 
might be to ascertain that Charleston could not be taken by 
water. The expedition returned to Hilton Head, and a period 
of inactivity followed, enlivened only by unimportant raids, news- 
pa})er correspondence, and the small quai rels that naturally arise 
in an unemployed army. 

Later in the season Miss Barton accompanied the Gilmore 
and Dahlgren expedition, and was present at nearly all the mili- 
tary operations on James, Folly, and Morris Islands. The 



126 

ground occupied on the latter by the army, during the long siege 
of Fort Wagner, was the low sand-hills forming the sea-board of 
the Island. No tree, shrub, or weed grew there; and the only 
shelter was light tents without floors. The light sand that 
yielded to the tread, the walker sinking to the ankles at almost 
every step, glistened in the sun, and burned the feet like particles 
of fire, and as the ocean winds swept it, it darkened the air and 
filled the eyes and nostrils. There was no defense against it, and 
every wound speedily became covered with a concrete of gore and 
sand. Tent pins would not hold in the treacherous sand, every 
vigorous blast from the sea, overturned the tents, leaving the 
occupants exposed to the storm or the torrid sun. It was here, 
under the fire of the heaviest of the rebel batteries, that Miss 
Barton spent the most trying part of the summer. Her employ- 
ment was, with three or four men detailed to assist her, to boil 
water in the lee of a sand-hill, to wash the wounds of the men 
who were daily struck by rebel shot, to prepare tea and coffee, 
and various dishes made from dried fruits, farina, and desiccated 
milk and eggs. On the 19th of July, when the great night 
assault was made on Wagner, and everybody expected to find 
rest and refreshments within the rebel fortress, she alone, so far 
as I can learn, kept up her fires and preparations. She alone had 
anything suitable to offer the wounded and exhausted men who 
streamed back from the repulse, and covered the sand-hills like a 
flight of locusts. 

Through all the long bombardment that followed, until Sumter 
was reduced, and Wagner and Gregg was ours, amid the scorching 
sun and the prevalence of prostrating diseases, though herself 
more than once struck down with illness, she remained at her 
post, a most fearless and efiicient co-worker with the indefatigable 
agent of the Sanitary Commission, Dr. M. M. Marsh, in saving 
the lives and promoting the health of the soldiers of the Union 
army. "How could you,'^ said a friend to her subsequently, 
"how could you expose your life and health to that deadly 



CLAEA HAELOWE BARTON. 127 

heat?'' "Why/' she answered^ evidently without a thought of 
the heroism of the answer^ "the other ladies thought they could 
not endure the climate^ and as I knew somebody must take care 
of the soldiers, I went." 

In January, 1864, Miss Barton returned to the North, and 
after spending four or five weeks in visiting her friends and 
recruiting her wasted strength, again took up her position at 
Washington, and commenced making preparations for the coming 
campaign which from observation, she was convinced would be 
the fiercest and most destructive of human life of any of the war. 
The first week of the campaign found her at the secondary base 
of the army at Belle Plain, and thence with the great army of the 
wounded she moved to Frederit^ksburg. Extensive as had been 
her preparations, and wide as were the circle of friends who had 
entrusted to her the means of solace and healing, the slaughter 
had been so terrific that she found her supplies nearly exhausted, 
and for the first time during the war was compelled to appeal for 
further supplies to her friends at the North, expending in the 
meantime freely, as she had done all along, of her own private 
means for the succor of the poor wounded soldiers. Moving on 
to Port Poyal, and thence to the James River, she presently 
became attached to the Army of the James, where General Butler, 
at the instance of his Chief Medical Director, Surgeon McCormick, 
acknowledging her past services, and appreciating her abilities, 
gave her a recognized position, which greatly enhanced her use- 
fulness, and enabled her, with her energetic nature, to contribute 
as much to the welfare and comfort of the army in that year, as 
she had been able to do in all her previous connection with it. 
In January, 1865, she returned to Washington, where she was 
detained from the front for nearly two months by the illness and 
death of a brother and nephew, and did not again join the army 
in the field. 

By this time, of course, she was very generally known, and 
the circle of her coriespondence was wide. Her influence in high 



128 woman's work i:n^ the civil wae. 

official quarters was supposed to be considerable, and she was in 
the daily receipt of inquiries and applications of various kinds, in 
particular in regard to the fate of men believed to have been con- 
fined in Southern prisons. The great number of letters received 
of this class, led her to decide to spend some months at Annapolis, 
among the camps and records of paroled and exchanged prisoners, 
for the purpose of answering the inquiries of friends. Her plan 
of operation was approved by President Lincoln, March 11, 1866, 
and notice of her appointment as ^^ General Correspondent for the 
friends of Paroled Prisoners,^' was published in the newspapers 
extensively, bringing in a torrent of inquiries and letters from 
wives, parents, State officials, agencies, the Sanitary Commission 
and the Christian Commission. On reaching Annapolis, she en- 
countered obstacles that were vexatious, time-wasting, and in fact, 
insupportable. Without rank, rights or authority credited by 
law, the officials there were at a loss how to receive her. The 
town was so crowded that she could find no private lodgings, and 
had to force herself as a scarce welcome guest upon some one for 
a few days, while her baggage stood out in the snow. Nearly 
two months were consumed in negotiations before an order was 
obtained from the War Department to the effect that the military 
authorities at Annapolis might allow her the use of a tent, and its 
furniture, and a moderate supply of postage stamps. This was 
not mandatory, but permissive; and negotiations could now be 
opened with the gentlemen at Annapolis. In the meantime the 
President had been assassinated, Richmond taken, and Lee's army 
surrendered. The rebellion was breaMng away. All prisoners 
were to be released from parole, and sent home, and nothing 
would remain at Annapolis but the records. Unfortunately these 
proved to be of very little service — but a small per centage of 
those inquired for, were found on the rolls, and obviously these, 
for the most part, were not men who had been lost, but who had 
returned. She was also informed, on good authority, that a large 
number of prisoners had been exchanged without roll or record, 



CLARA HARLOWE BARTON. 129 

and that some rolls were so fraudulent and incorrect, as to be 
worthless. Poor wretches in the rebel pens seemed even to forget 
the names their mother called them. The Annapolis scheme was 
therefore abandoned, with mortification that thousands of letters 
had lain so long unanswered, that thousands of anxious friends 
were daily waiting for tidings of their loved and lost. The pathos 
and simplicity of these letters was often touching. An old man 
writes that he has two sons and three grandsons in the army, and 
of two of the five he could get no tidings. Another says she 
knew her son was brave, and if he died, he died honorably. He 
was all she had and she gave him freely to the country. If he be 
really lost she will not repine; but she feels she has a right to be 
told what became of him. Many of the writers seemed to have a 
very primitive idea of the way information was to be picked up. 
They imagined that Miss Barton was to walk through all hos- 
pitals, camps, armies and prisons, and narrowly scrutinizing every 
face, would be able to identify the lost boy by the descriptions 
given her. Hence the fond mother minutely described her boy 
as he remained graven on her memory on the day of his departure. 
The result of these delays was the organization, by Miss Barton, 
at her own cost, of a Bureau of Records of Missing Men of the 
Armies of the United States, at Washington. Here she collected 
all rolls of prisoners, hospital records, and records of burials in 
the rebel prisons and elsewhere, and at short intervals published 
Rolls of Missing Men, which, by the franks of some of her frinds 
among the Members of Congress, were sent to all parts of the 
United States, and posted in prominent places, and in many 
instances copied into local papers. The method adopted for the 
discovery of information concerning these missing men, and the 
communication of that information to their friends who had made 
inquiries concerning them may be thus illustrated. 

A Mrs. James of Kennebunk, Maine, has seen a notice in the 
paper that Miss Clara Barton of Washington will receive inqui- 
ries from friends of " missing men of the Army," and will en- 
17 



130 woman's work in the civil war. 

deavor to obtain information for them without fee or reward. 
She forthwith writes to Miss Barton that she is anxious to gain 
tidings of her husband, Eli James, Sergeant Company F. Fourth 
Maine Infantry, who has not been heard of since the battle of 
. This letter, when received, is immediately acknow- 
ledged, registered in a book, endorsed and filed away for conve- 
nient reference. The answer satisfied Mrs. James for the time, 
that her letter was not lost and that some attention is given to 
her inquiry. If the fate of Sergeant James is known or can be 
learned from the official rolls the information is sent at once. 
Otherwise the case lies over until there are enough to form a roll, 
which will probably be within a few weeks. A roll of Missing 
Men is then made up — with an appeal for information respecting 
them, of which from twenty thousand to thirty thousand copies 
are printed to be posted all over the United States, in all places 
where soldiers are most likely to congregate. It is not impos- 
sible, that in say two weeks' time, one James Miller, of Keokuk, 
Iowa, writes that he has seen the name of his friend James 
posted for information ; that he found him lying on the ground, 

at the battle of mortally wounded with a fragment of 

shell ; that he, James, gave the writer a few articles from about 
his person, and a brief message to his wife and children, whom 
he is now unable to find ; that the national troops fell back from 
that portion of the field leaving the dead within the enemy's 
lines, who consequently were never reported. When this letter 
is received it is also registered in a book, endorsed and filed, and 
a summary of its contents is sent to Mrs. James, with the inti- 
mation that further particulars of interest to her can be learned 
by addressing James Miller, of Keokuk, Iowa. 

Soon after entering fully upon this work in Washington, and 
having obtained the rolls of the prison hospitals of Wilmington, 
Salisbury, Florence, Charleston, and other Rebel prisons of the 
South, Miss Barton ascertained that Dorrance Atwater, a young 
Connecticut soldier, who had been a prisoner at Andersonville, 



CLARA HAELOWE BARTON. 131 

Georgia, had succeeded in obtaining a copy of all the records of 
interments in that field of death, during his employment in the 
hospital there, and that he could identify the graves of most of 
the thirteen thousand who had died there the victims of Rebel 
cruelty. 

Atwater was induced to permit Government officers to copy 
his roll, and on the representation of Miss Barton that no time 
should be lost in putting up head-boards to the graves of the 
Union Soldiers, Captain James M. Moore, Assistant Quarter- 
master, was ordered to proceed to Andersonville with young 
Atwater and a suitable force, to lay out the grounds as a cemetery 
and place head-boards to the graves; and Miss Barton was re- 
quested by the Secretary of War to accompany him. She did so, 
and the grounds were laid out and fenced, and all the graves 
except about four hundred which could not be identified were 
marked with suitable head-boards. On their return, Miss Barton 
resumed her duties, and Captain Moore caused Atwater's arrest 
on the charge of having stolen from the Government the list he 
had loaned them for copying, and after a hasty trial by Court- 
Martial, he was sentenced to be imprisoned in the Auburn State 
Prison for two years and six months. The sentence was imme- 
diately carried into effect. 

Miss Barton felt that this whole charge, trial and sentence, was 
grossly unjust ; that Atwater had committed no crime, not even 
a technical one, and that he ought to be relieved from imprison- 
ment. She accordingly exerted herself to have the case brought 
before the President. This was done; and in part through the 
influence of General Benjamin F. Butler, an order was sent on to 
the Warden of the Auburn Prison to set the prisoner at liberty. 
Atwater subsequently published his roll of the Andersonville dead, 
to which Miss Barton prefixed a narrative of the expedition to 
Andersonville. Her Bureau had by this time become an institu- 
tion of great and indispensable importance not only to the friends 
of missing men but to the Sanitary Commission, and to the Gov- 



132 WOMAN S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR. 

eminent itself, which could not without daily and almost hourly 
reference to her records settle the accounts for bounties, back pay, 
and pensions. Thus far, however, it had been sustained wholly 
at her own cost, and in this and other labors for the soldiers she 
had expended her entire private fortune of eight or ten thousand 
dollars. Soon after the assembling of Congress, Hon. Henry 
Wilson, of Massachusetts, who had always been her firm friend, 
moved an appropriation of fifteen thousand dollars to remunerate 
her for past expenditure, and enable her to maintain the Bureau 
of Records of Missing Men, which had proved of such service. 
To the honor of Congress it should be said, that the appropriation 
passed both houses by a unanimous vote. Miss Barton still con- 
tinues her good work, and has been instrumental in sending 
certainty if not solace to thousands of families, who mourned 
their loved ones as lying in unknown graves. 

In person Miss Barton is about of medium height, her form 
and figure indicating great powers of endurance. Though not 
technically beautiful, her dark expressive eye is attractive, and 
she possesses, evidently unconsciously to herself, great powers of 
fascination. Her voice is soft, low, and of extraordinary sweet- 
ness of tone. As we have said she is modest, quiet and retiring 
in manner, and is extremely reticent in speaking of anything she 
has done, while she is ever ready to bestow the full meed of praise 
on the labors of others. Her devotion to her work has been 
remarkable, and her organizing abilities are unsurpassed among 
her own sex and equalled by very few among the other. She is 
still young, and with her power and disposition for usefulness is 
destined we hope to prove greatly serviceable to the country she 
so ardently loves. 



HELEN LOUISE GILSON 




ISS HELEN LOUISE GILSON is a native of Boston, 
but removed in childhood to Chelsea, Massachusetts, 
where she now resides. She is a niece of Hon. Frank 
B. Fay, former Mayor of Chelsea, and was his ward. 
Mr. Fay, from the commencement of the war took the most active 
interest in the National cause, devoting his time, his wealth and 
his personal efforts to the welfare of the soldiers. In the autumn 
of 1861 he went in person to the seat of war, and from that time 
forward, in every battle in which the Army of the Potomac was 
engaged, he was promptly upon the field with his stores and 
appliances of healing, and moved gently though rapidly among 
the dead and wounded, soothing helpless, suffering and bleeding 
men parched with fever, crazed with thirst, or lying neglected in 
the last agonies of death. After two years of this independent 
work performed when as yet the Sanitary Commission had no 
field agencies, and did not attempt to minister to the suffering 
and wounded until they had come under the hands of the sur- 
geons, Mr. Fay laid before the Sanitary Commission, in the 
winter of 1863-4, his plans for an Auxiliary Relief Corps, to 
afford personal relief in the field, to the wounded soldier, and 
render him such assistance, as should enable him to bear with less 
injury the delay which must ensue before he could come under 
the surgeon's care or be transferred to a hospital, and in cases of 
the slighter wounds furnish the necessary dressings and attention. 

133 



134 

Tlie Sanitary Commission at once adopted these plans and made 
Mr. Fay chief of the Auxiliary Relief Corps. In this capacity 
he performed an amount of labor of which few men were capable, 
till December, 1864, when he retired from it but continued his 
independent work till the close of the war. During his visits 
at home he was active in organizing and directing measures for 
raising supplies and money for the Sanitary Commission and the 
independent measures of relief. 

Influenced by such an example of lofty and self-sacrificing 
patriotism, and with her own young heart on fire with love for 
her country. Miss Gilson from the very commencement of the 
war, gave herself to the work of caring for the soldiers, first at 
home, and afterward in the field. In that glorious uprising of 
American women, all over the North, in the spring of 1861, to 
organize Soldiers^ Aid Societies she was active and among the 
foremost in her own city. She had helped to prepare and collect 
supplies, and to arrange them for transportation. She had also 
obtained a contract for the manufacture of army clothing, from 
the Government, by means of which she provided employment 
for soldiers' wives and daughters, raising among the benevolent 
and patriotic people of Chelsea and vicinity, a fund which enabled 
her to pay a far more liberal sum than -the contractors' prices, foi 
this labor. 

When Mr. Fay commenced his personal services with the Army 
of the Potomac, Miss Gilson, wishing to accompany him, applied 
to Miss D. L. Dix, Government Superintendent of Female Nurses, 
for a diploma, but as she had not reached the required age she 
was rejected. This, however, did not prevent her from fulfilling 
her ardent desire of ministering to the sick and wounded, but 
served in a measure to limit her to services upon the field, where 
she could act in concert with Mr. Fay, or otherwise under the 
direction of the Sanitary Commission. 

During nearly the whole term of Miss Gilson's service she was 
in company with Mr. Fay and his assistants. The party had 



HELEN LOUISE GILSON. 135 

their own tent, forming a household, and carrying with them 
something of home-life. 

In this manner she, with her associates, followed the Army of 
the Potomac, through its various vicissitudes, and was present at, 
or near, almost every one of its great battles except the first battle 
of Bull Eun. 

In the summer of 1862 Miss Gilson was for some time attached 
to the Hospital Transport service, and was on board the Knicker- 
bocker when up the Pamunky River at White House, and after- 
ward at Harrison's Landing during the severe battles which 
marked McClellan's movement from the Chickahominy to the 
James River. Amidst the terrible scenes of those eventful days, 
the quiet energy, the wonderful comforting and soothing power, 
and the perfect adaptability of Miss Gilson to her work were con- 
spicuous. 

Whatever she did was douv well, and so noiselessly that only 
the results were seen. When not more actively employed she 
would sit by the bed-sides of the suffering men, and charm away 
their pain by the magnetism of her low, calm voice, and soothing 
words. She sang for them, and, kneeling beside them, where 
they lay amidst all the agonizing sights and sounds of the hos- 
pital wards, and even upon the field of carnage, her voice would 
ascend in petition, for peace, for relief, for sustaining grace in the 
brief journey to the other world, carrying with it their souls into 
the realms of an exalted faith. 

As may be supposed, Miss Gilson exerted a remarkable per- 
sonal influence over the wounded soldiers as well as all those 
with whom she was brought in contact. She always shrank from 
notoriety, and strongly deprecated any publicity in regard to her 
work; but the thousands who witnessed her extraordinary ac- 
tivity, her remarkable executive power, her ability in evoking 
order out of chaos, and providing for thousands of sick and 
wounded men where most persons would have been completely 
overwhelmed in the care of scores or hundreds, could not always 



136 

be prevented from speaking of her in the public prints. Tlie 
uniform cheerfulness and buoyancy of spirit with which all her 
work was performed, added greatly to its efficiency in removing 
the depressing influences, so common in the hospitals and among 
the wounded. 

From some of the reports of agents of the Sanitary Commis- 
sion we select the following passages referring to her, as express- 
ing in more moderate language than some others, the sentiments 
in regard to her work entertained by all who were brought into 
contact with her. 

" Upon Miss Gilson's services, we scarcely dare trust ourselves 
to comment. Upon her experience we relied for counsel, and it 
was chiefly due to her advice and efforts, that the work in our 
hospital went on so successfully. Always quiet, self-possessed, 
and prompt in the discharge of duty, she accomplished more than 
any one else could for the relief of the wounded, besides being a 
constant example and embodiment of earnestness for all. Her 
ministrations were always grateful to the wounded men, who de- 
votedly loved her for her self-sacrificing spirit. Said one of the 
Fifth 'New Jersey in our hearing, ' There isn't a man in our regi- 
ment who wouldn't lay down his life for IMiss Gilson.' 

" We have seen the dying man lean his head upon her shoulder, 
while she breathed into his ear the soothing prayer that calmed, 
cheered and prepared him for his journey through the dark 
valley. 

" Under the direction of Miss Gilson, the special diet was pre- 
pared, and we cannot strongly enough express our sense of the 
invaluable service she rendered in this department. The food 
was always eagerly expected and relished by the men, with many 
expressions of praise.'' 

After the battle of Gettysburg Mr. Fay and his party went 
thither on their mission of help and mercy. And never was such 
a mission more needed. Crowded within the limits, and in the 
immediate vicinity, of that small country-town, were twenty-five 



HELEN LOUISE GILSON. 137 

thousand wounded men, thirteen thousand seven hundred and 
thirteen of our own, and nearly twelve thousand wounded rebel 
prisoners. The Government in anticipation of the battle had 
provided medical and surgical supplies and attendance for about 
ten thousand. Had not the Sanitary Commission supplemented 
this supply, and sent efficient agents to the field, the loss of life, 
and the amount of suffering, terrible as they were with the best 
appliances, must have been almost incredibly great. 

Here as elsewhere Miss Gilson soon made a favorable impres- 
sion on the wounded men. They looked up to her, reverenced 
and almost worshipped her. She had their entire confidence and 
respect. Even the roughest of them yielded to her influence and 
obeyed her wishes, which were always made known in a gentle 
manner and in a voice peculiarly low and sweet. 

It has been recorded by one who knew her Avell, that she once 
stepped out of her tent, before which a group of brutal men were 
fiercely quarrelling, having refused, with oaths and vile language, 
to carry a sick comrade to the hospital at the request of one of 
the male agents of the Commission, and quietly advancing to 
their midst, renewed the request as her own. Immediately every 
angry tone was stilled. Their voices were lowered, and modu- 
lated respectfully. Their oaths ceased, and quietly and cheer- 
fully, without a word of objection, they lifted their helpless 
burden, and tenderly carried him away. 

At the same time she was as efficient in action as in influence. 
Without bustle, and with unmoved calmness, she would superin- 
tend the preparation of food for a thousand men, and assist in 
feeding them herself. Just so she moved amidst the flying 
bullets upon the field, bringing succor to the wounded ; or 
through the hospitals amidst the pestilent air of the fever-stricken 
wards. Self-controlled, she could control others, and ordezr and 
symmetry sprung up before her as a natural result of the opera- 
tion of a well-balanced mind. 

In all her journies Miss Gilson made use of the opportunities 

18 



138 

aiforded her wherever she stopped to plead the cause of the 
soldier to the people, who readily assembled at her suggestion. 
She thus stimulated energies that might otherwise have flagged, 
and helped to swell the supplies continually pouring in to the 
depots of the Sanitary Commission. But Miss Gilson^s crowning 
work was performed during that last protracted campaign of 
General Grant from the Rapidan to Petersburg and the Appo- 
mattox, a campaign which by almost a year of constant fighting 
finished the most terrible and destructive war of modern times. 
She had taken the field with ]\ir. Fay at the very commence- 
ment of the campaign, and had been indefatigable in her efforts 
to relieve what she could of the fearful suffering of those de- 
structive battles of May, 1864, in which the dead and wounded 
were numbered by scores of thousands. To how many poor 
sufferers she brought relief from the raging thirst and the racking 
agony of their wounds, to how many aching hearts her words of 
cheer and her sweet songs bore comfort and hope, to how many 
of those on whose countenances the Angel of death had already 
set his seal, she whispered of a dying and risen Saviour, and of 
the mansions prepared for them that love him, will never be 
known till the judgment of the great day ; but this we know, 
that thousands now living speak with an almost rapturous enthu- 
siasm, of "the little lady who in their hours of agony, ministered 
to them with such sweetness, and never seemed to weary of 
serving them.'^ 

A young physician in the service of the Sanitary Commission, 
Dr. William Howell Reed, who was afterwards for many months 
associated with her and Mr. Fay in their labors of auxiliary relief, 
thus describes his first opportunity of observing her work. It 
was at Fredericksburg in May, 1864, when that town was for a 
time the base of the Army of the Potomac, and the place to which 
the wounded were brought for treatment before being sent to the 
hospitals at Washington and Baltimore. The building used as a 
hospital, and v>diich she visited Vv^as the mansion of John L. Marie, 



HELEN LOUISE GILSON. 139 

a large building, but much of it in ruins from the previous bom- 
bardment of the city. It was crowded with wounded in every 
part. Dr. Reed says: — 

"One afternoon, just before the evacuation, when the atmos- 
phere of our rooms was close and foul, and all were longing for a 
breath of our cooler northern air, while the men were moaning in 
pain, or were restless with fever, and our hearts were sick with 
pity for the sufferers, I heard a light step upon the stairs; and 
looking up I saw a young lady enter, who brought with her such 
an atmosphere of calm and cheerful courage, so much freshness, 
such an expression of gentle, womanly sympathy, that her mere 
presence seemed to revive the drooping spirits of the men, and to 
give a new power of endurance through the long and painful 
hours of suffering. First with one, then at the side of another, 
a friendly word here, a gentle nod and smile there, a tender sym- 
pathy with each prostrate sufferer, a sympathy which could read 
in his eyes his longing for home love, and for the presence of 
some absent one — in those few minutes hers was indeed an angel 
ministry. Before she left the room she sang to them, first some 
stirring national melody, then some sweet or plaintive hymn to 
strengthen the fainting heart; and I remember how the notes 
penetrated to every part of the building. Soldiers with less 
severe wounds, from the rooms above, began to crawl out into the 
entries, and men from below crept up on their hands and knees, 
to catch every note, and to receive of the benediction of her 
presence — for such it was to them. Then she went away. I dia 
not know who she was, but I was as much moved and melted as 
any soldier of them all. This is my first reminiscence of Helen 
L. Gilson." 

Thus far Miss Gil son's cares and labors had been bestowed 
almost exclusively on the white soldiers; but the time approached 
when she was to devote herself to the work of creating a model 
hospital for the colored soldiers who now formed a considerable 
body of troops in the Army of the Potomac. She was deeply 



140 woman's work in the civil war. 

interested in the struggle of the African race upward into the 
new life which seemed opening for them^ and her efforts for the 
mental and moral elevation of the freedmen and their families 
were eminently deserving of record. 

Dr. Reed relates how, as they were passing down the Rappa- 
hannock and up the York and Pamunky rivers to the new tem- 
porary base of the army at Port Royal, they found a govern- 
ment barge which had been appropriated to the use of the " con- 
trabands/' of whom about a thousand were stowed away upon it, 
of all ages and both sexes, all escaped from their former masters 
in that part of Virginia. The hospital party heard them singing 
the negroes' evening hymn, and taking a boat from the steamer 
rowed to the barge, and after a little conversation persuaded them 
to renew their song, which was delivered with all the fervor, 
emotion and abandon of the negro character. 

When their song had ceased. Miss Gilson addressed them. She 
pictured the reality of freedom, told them what it meant and what 
they would have to do, no longer would there be a master to deal 
out the peck of corn, no longer a mistress to care for the old 
people or the children. They were to work for themselves, 
provide for their own sick, and support their own infirm; but all 
this was to be done under new conditions. No overseer was to 
stand over them with the whip, for their new master was the 
necessity of earning their daily bread. Very soon new and higher 
motives would come; fresh encouragements, a nobler ambition, 
would grow into their new condition. Then in the simplest 
language she explained the diiference between their former rela- 
tions with the then master and their new relations with the north- 
ern people, showing that labor here was voluntary, and that they 
could only expect to secure kind employers by faithfully doing 
all they had to do. Then, enforcing truthfuhiess, neatness, and 
economy, she said, — 

" You know that the Lord Jesus died and rose again for you. 
You love to sing his praise and to draw near to him in prayer. 



HELEN LOUISE GILSON. 141 

But remember that this is not all of religion. You must do 
right as well as pray right. Your lives must be full of kind 
deeds towards each other, full of gentle and loving affections, full 
of unselfishness and truth : this is true piety. You must make 
Monday and Tuesday just as good and pure as Sunday is, remem- 
bering that God looks not only at your prayers and your emotions, 
but at the way you live, and speak, and act, every hour of your 
lives.^' 

Then she sang Whittier's exquisite hymn : — 

"O, praise an' tanks, — the Lord he come 

To set de people free; 
An' massa tink it day ob doom, 

An' Ave ob jubilee. 
De Lord dat heap de Eed Sea wabes, 

He just as 'trong as den ; 
He say de word, we last night slabes, 

To-day de Lord's free men." 

Here were a thousand people breathing their first free air. 
They were new born with this delicious sense of freedom. They 
listened with moistened eyes to every word which concerned their 
future, and felt that its utterance came from a heart which could 
embrace them all in its sympathies. Life was to them a jubilee 
only so far as they could make it so by a consciousness of duty 
faithfully done. They had hard work before them, much priva- 
tion, many struggles. They had everything to learn — the new 
industries of the North, their changed social condition, and how 
to accept their ncAV responsibilities. 

As she spoke the circle grew larger, and they pressed round 
her more eagerly. It was all a part of their new life. They 
welcomed it; and, by every possible expression of gratitude to 
her, they showed hoAV desirous they were to learn. Those who 
were present can never forget the scene — a thousand dusky faces, 
expressive of such fervency and enthusiasm, their large eyes filled 
with tears, answering to the throbbing heart below, all dimy out- 



142 



lined by tlie flickering rays of a single lamp. And when it was 
over^ we felt that we could understand our relations to them, and 
the new duties which this great hour had brought upon us. 

It was not till the sanguinary battles of the 15thj 16th, 17th, 
and 18th of June, 1864, that there had been any considerable 
number of the colored troops of the Army of the Potomac wounded. 
In those engagements however, as Avell as in the subsequent ones 
of the explosion of the mine, and the actions immediately around 
Petersburg, they suffered terribly. The wounded were brought 
rapidly to City Point, where a temporary hospital had been pro- 
vided. We give a description of this hospital in the words of 
Dr. Reed, who was associated subsequently with Miss Gilson in 
its management. 

^^ It Avas, in no other sense a hospital, than that it was a depot 
for wounded men. There were defective management and chaotic 
confusion. The men were neglected, the hospital organization 
was imperfect, and the mortality was in consequence frightfully 
large. Their condition was horrible. The severity of the cam- 
paign in a malarious country had prostrated many with fevers, 
and typhoid, in its most malignant forms, was raging with increas- 
ing fatality. 

"These stories of suffering reached Miss Gilson at a moment 
when the previous labors of the campaign had nearly exhausted 
her strength; but her duty seemed plain. There were no volun- 
teers for the emergency, and she prepared to go. Her friends 
declared that she could not survive it; but replying that she 
could not die in a cause more sacred, she started out alone. A 
hospital was to be created, and this required all the tact, finesse, 
and diplomacy of which a woman is capable. Official prejudice 
and professional pride was to be met and overcome. A new 
policy was to be introduced, and it was to be done without seem- 
ing to interfere. Her doctrine and practice always were instant, 
silent, and cheerful obedience to medical and disciplinary orders, 



HELEN LOUISE GILSON. 143 

without any qualification whatever; and by this she overcame the 
natural sensitiveness of the medical authorities. 

"A hospital kitchen was to be organized upon her method of 
special diet; nurses were to learn her way, and be educated to 
their duties; while cleanliness, order, system, were to be enforced 
in the daily routine. Moving quietly on with her work of reno- 
vation, she took the responsibility of all changes that became 
necessary; and such harmony prevailed in the camp that her 
policy was vindicated as time rolled on. The rate of mortality 
was lessened, and the hospital was soon considered the best in the 
department. This was accomplished by a tact and energy which 
sought no praise, but modestly veiled themselves behind the 
orders of officials. The management of her kitchen was like the 
ticking of a clock — regular discipline, gentle firmness, and sweet 
temper always. The diet for the men was changed three times a 
day ; and it was her aim to cater as far as possible to the appe- 
tites of individual men. Her daily rounds in the wards brought 
lier into personal intercourse with every patient, and she knew 
his special need. At one time, when nine hundred men were 
supplied from her kitchen (with seven hundred rations daily), I 
took down her diet list for one dinner, and give it here in a note,* 
to show the variety of the articles, and her careful consideration 
of the condition of separate men." 



* " List of rations in the Colored Hospital at City Point, being a dinner on 
Wednesday, April 25th, 1865:— 

Koast Beef, Tomatoes, 

Shad, Tea, 

Veal Broth, Coffee, 

Stewed Oysters, Toast, 

Beef Tea, Gruel, 

Mashed Potatoes, Scalded Milk, 

Lemonade, Crackers and Sherry Cobbler, 

Apple Jelly, Koast Apple. 

Farina Pudding, 

Let it not be supposed that this was an ordinary hospital diet. Although 



144. 

The following passage from the pen of Harriet Martineau^ in 
regard to the management of the kitchen at Scutari, by Florence 
Nightingale, is true also of those organized by Miss Gilson in 
Virginia. The parallel is so close, and the illustration of the 
daily administration of this department of her work so vivid, that, 
if the circumstances under which it was written were not known, 
I should have said it was a faithful picture of our kitchen in the 
Colored Hospital at City Point: — 

"The very idea of that kitchen was savory in the wards; for 
out of it came, at the right moment, arrowroot, hot and of the 
pleasantest consistence; rice puddings, neither hard on the one 
hand or clammy on the other; cool lemonade for the feverish; 
cans full of hot tea for the weary, and good coffee for the faint. 
When the sinking sufferer was lying with closed eyes, too feeble 
to make moan or sigh, the hospital spoon was put between his 
lips, with the mouthful of strong broth or hot wine, which rallied 
him till the w^atchful nurse came round again. The meat from 
that kitchen was tenderer than any other, the beef tea was more 
savory. One thing that came out of it was the lesson on the 
saving of good cookery. The mere circumstance of the boiling 
water being really boiling there, made a difference of two ounces 
of rice in every four puddings, and of more than half the arrow- 
root used. The same quantity of arrowroot which made a pint 
thin and poor in the general kitchen, made two pints thick and 
good in Miss Nightingale's. 

"Again, in contrasting the general kitchen with the light or 
special diet prepared for the sicker men, there was all the differ- 
ence between having placed before them Hhe cold mutton chop 
Avith its opaque fat, the beef with its caked gravy, the arrowroot 
stiff and glazed, all untouched, as might be seen by the bed-sides 



such a list was furnished at this time, yet it was only possible while the hos- 
pital had an ample base, like City Point. The armies, when operating at a 
distance, could give but two or three articles ; and in active campaigns these 
were furnished with great irregularity." 



HELEJs^ LOUISE GILSON. 145 

in the afternoons, while the patients were lying back, sinking for 
want of support/ and seeing ' the quick and quiet nurses enter 
as the clock struck, with their hot water tins, hot morsels ready 
cuf, bright knife, and fork, and spoon, — and all ready for instant 
eating !' 

" The nurses looked for Miss Gilson's word of praise, and labored 
for it; and she had only to suggest a variety in the decoration of 
the tents to stimulate a most honorable rivalry among them, 
which soon opened a wide field for displaying ingenuity and 
taste, so that not only was its standard the highest, but it was the 
most cheerfully picturesque hospital at City Point. 

^^This colored hospital service was one of those extraordinary 
tasks, out of the ordinary course of army hospital discipline, that 
none but a woman could execute. It required more than a man's 
power of endurance, for men fainted and fell under the burden. 
It required a woman's discernment, a woman's tenderness, a 
woman's delicacy and tact ; it required such nerve and moral force, 
and such executive power, as are rarely united in any woman's 
character. The simple grace with which she moved about the 
hospital camps, the gentle dignity with which she ministered to 
the suffering about her, won all hearts. As she passed through 
the wards, the men would follow her with their eyes, attracted by 
the grave sweetness of her manner; and when she stopped by 
some bed-side, and laid her hand upon the forehead and smoothed 
the hair of a soldier, speaking some cheering, pleasant word, I 
have seen the tears gather in his eyes, and his lips quiver, as he 
tried to speak or to touch the fold of her dress, as if appealing to 
her to listen, while he opened his heart about the mother, wife, or 
sister far away. I have seen her in her sober gray flannel gown, 
sitting motionless by the dim candle-light, — which was all our 
camp could afford, — with her eyes open and watchful, and her 
hands ever ready for all those endless wants of sickness at night, 
especially sickness that may be tended unto death, or unto the 
awful struggle between life and death, which it was the lot of 

19 



146 

nearly all of us at some time to keep watch over until the danger 
had gone by. And in sadder trials, when the life of a soldier 
whom she had watched and ministered to was trembling in the 
balance between earth and heaven, waiting for Him to make all 
things new, she has seemed, by some special grace of the Spirit, to 
reach the living Christ, and draw a blessing down as the shining 
way was opened to the tomb. And I have seen such looks of 
gratitude from weary eyes, now brightened by visions of heavenly 
glory, the last of many recognitions of her ministry. Absorbed 
in her work, unconscious of the spiritual beauty which invested 
her daily life, — whether in her kitchen, in the heat and over- 
crowding incident to the issues of a large special diet list, or sitting 
at the cot of some poor lonely soldier, whispering of the higher 
realities of another world, — she was always the same presence of 
grace and love, of peace and benediction. I have been with her 
in the wards when the men have craved some simple religious 
services, — the reading of Scripture, the repetition of a psalm, the 
singing of a hymn, or the offering of a prayer, — and invariably 
the men were melted to tears by the touching simplicity of her 
eloquence. 

^^ These were the tokens of her ministry among the sickest men; 
but it was not here alone that her influence was felt in the hos- 
pital. Was there jealousy in the kitchen, her quick penetration 
detected the cause, and in her gentle way harmony was restored ; 
was there profanity among the convalescents, her daily presence 
and kindly admonition or reproof, with an occasional glance 
which spoke her sorrow for such sin, were enough to check tlie 
evil; or was there hardship or discontent, the knowledge that she 
was sharing the discomfort too, was enough to compel patient 
endurance until a remedy could be provided. And so, through 
all the war, from the seven days' conflict upon the Peninsula, in 
those early July days of 1862, through the campaigns of Antietam 
and Fredericksburg, of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, and after 
the conflicts of the Wilderness, and the fierce and undecided 



HELEN LOUISE GILSON. 147 

battles which were fought for the possession of Richmond and 
Petersburg, in 1864 and 1865, she labored steadfastly on until 
the end. Through scorching heat and pinching cold, in the tent 
or upon the open field, in the ambulance or on the saddle, through 
rain and snow, amid unseen perils of the enemy, under fire upon 
the field, or in the more insidious dangers of contagion, she worked 
quietly on, doing her simple part with all womanly tact and skill, 
until now the hospital dress is laid aside, and she rests, with the 
sense of a noble work done, and with the blessings and prayers of 
the thousands whose sufferings she has relieved, or whose lives she 
has saved/^ 

Amid all these labors, Miss Giison found time and opportunity 
to care for the poor negro washerwomen and their families, who 
doing the washing of the hospital were allowed rations and a rude 
shelter by the government in a camp near the hospital grounds. 
Finding that they were suffering from overcrowding, privation, 
neglect, and sickness, she procured the erection of comfortable 
huts for them, obtained clothing from the North for the more 
destitute, and by example and precept encouraged them in habits 
of neatness and order, while she also inculcated practical godli- 
ness in all their life. In a short time from one of the most mise- 
rable this became the best of the Freedmen's camps. 

As was the case with nearly every woman who entered the 
service at the seat of war. Miss Giison suffered from malarious 
fever. As often as possible she returned to her home for a brief 
space, to recruit her wasted energies, and it was those brief inter- 
vals of rest which enabled her to remain at her post until several 
months after the surrender of Lee virtually ended the war. 

She left Richmond in July, 1865, and spent the remainder of 
the summer in a quiet retreat upon Long Island, where she par- 
tially recovered her impaired health, and in the autumn returned 
to her home in Chelsea. 

In person Miss Giison is small and delicately proportioned. 
Without being technically beautiful, her features are lovely both 



148 

in form and expression, and though now nearly thirty years of age 
she looks much younger than she actually is. Her voice is low 
and softj and her speech gentle and deliberate. Her movements 
correspond in exact harmony with voice and speech. But, under 
the softness and gentleness of her external demeanor, one soon 
detects a firmness of determination, and a fixedness of will. No 
doubt, once determined upon the duty and propriety of any 
course, she will pursue it calmly and persistently to the end. It 
is to these qualifications, and physical and moral traits, that she 
owes the undoubted power and influence exercised in her late 
mission. 



MRS. JOHN HARRIS. 




E would have been a man of uncommon sagacity and 
penetration^ who in the beginning of 1861, should have 
chosen Mrs. Harris as capable of the great services and 
the extraordinary power of endurance with which her 
name has since been identified. A pale, quiet, delicate woman, 
often an invalid for months, and almost always a sufPerer ; the 
wife of a somewhat eminent physician, in Philadelphia, and in 
circumstances wdiich did not require constant activity for her live- 
lihood, refined, educated, and shrinking from all rough or brutal 
sights or sounds, she seemed one of those who were least fitted 
to endure the hardships, and encounter the roughnesses of a life 
in the camp or field hospitals. 

But beneath that quiet and frail exterior, there dwelt a firm 
and dauntless spirit. She had been known by her neighbors, and 
especially in the church of which she was an honored member, 
as a woman of remarkable piety and devotion, and as an excel- 
lent and skilful attendant upon the sick. When the war com- 
menced, she was one of the ladies who assembled to form the 
Ladies^ Aid Society of Philadelphia, and was chosen, we believe 
unanimously, Corresponding Secretary. She seems to have en- 
tered upon the work from the feeling that it was a part of her 
duty, a sacrifice she was called to make, a burden which she 
ought to bear. And through the war, mainly from her tempera- 
ment, which inclined her to look on the dark side, she never 
seemed stimulated or strengthened in her work by that abiding 

149 



150 woman's work in the civil war. 

conviction of the final success of our arms, which was to so many 
of the patient workers, the day-star of hope. Like Bunyan's 
Master Fearing, she was always apprehensive of defeat and dis- 
aster, of the triumph of the adversary ; and when victories came, 
lier eyes were so dim with tears for the bereaved and sorrow- 
stri(?ken, and her heart so heavy with their griefs that she could 
not join in the songs of triumph, or smile in unison with the na- 
tion's rejoicings. We speak of this not to depreciate her work or 
zeal, but rather to do the more honor to both. The despondent 
temperament and the intense sympathy with sorrow were consti- 
tutional, or the result of years of ill-health, and that under their 
depressing inflxience, with no step of her way lighted with the 
sunshine of joy, she should have not only continued faithful to 
her work, but have undergone more hardships and accomplished 
more, for the soldiers than most others, reflects the highest credit 
upon her patience, perseverance and devotion to the cause. 

We have elsewhere in this volume given an account of the 
origin and progress of the Ladies' Aid Society, of Philadelphia. 
Mrs. Harris, though continued as its Corresponding Secretary 
through the war, was, during the greater part of the time, its 
correspondent in the field, and left to the other officers, the work 
of raising and forwarding the money and supplies, while she at- 
tended in person to their distribution. This division of labor 
seems to have satisfied her associates, who forwarded to her order 
their hospital stores and money with the most perfect confidence 
in her judicious disposition of both. Other Societies, such as 
the Penn Relief, the Patriotic Daughters of Lancaster, and Aid 
Societies from the interior of Pennsylvania, as well as the Chris- 
tian and Sanitary Commissions, made her their almoners, and she 
distributed a larger amount of stores, perhaps, than any other 
lady in the field. 

The history of her work during the war, is given very fully, 
in her correspondence with the Ladies' Aid Society, published in 
their semi-annual reports. From these we gather that she had 



MRS. JOHN HARRIS. 151 

visited in 1861, and the winter of 1862, before the movement of 
the army to the peninsula, more than one hundred hospitals of 
the army of the Potomac, in and around Washington, and had 
not only ministered to the physical wants of the sick and wounded 
men, but had imparted religious instruction and consolation to 
many of them. Everywhere her coming had been welcomed; 
in many instances, eyes dimmed by the shadow of the wings of 
the death-angel, saw in her the wife or mother, for whose coming 
they had longed and died, with the hallowed word " mother ^^ on 
their lips. 

When in the spring of 1862, the army of the Potomac moved 
to the Peninsula, Mrs. Harris went thither, first distributing as 
far as practicable, her stores among the men. Soon after her ar- 
rival on the Peninsula, she found ample employment for her time. 
The Chesapeake and Hygeia hospitals at Fortress Monroe, filled 
at first mostly with the sick, and the few wounded in the siege 
of Yorktown, were, after the battles of Williamsburg and West 
Point crowded with such of the wounded, both Union and Con- 
federate soldiers as could be brought so far from the battle-fields. 
She spent two or three weeks here, aiding the noble women who 
were acting as Matrons of these hospitals. From thence she went 
on board the Vanderbilt, then just taken as a Government Trans- 
port for the wounded from the bloody field of Fair Oaks. 
She thus describes the scene and her work : 

"There were eight hundred on board. Passage-ways, state-rooms, floors 
from the dark and foetid hold to the hurricane deck, were all more than filled ; 
Bome on mattresses, some on blankets, others on straw; some in the death- 
struggle, others nearing it, some already beyond human sympathy and help ; 
some in their blood as they had been brought from the battle-field of the Sab- 
bath previous, and all hungry and thirsty, not having had anything to eat or 
drink, except hard crackers, for twenty-four hours. 

" The gentlemen who came on with us hurried on to the White House, and 
would have had us go with them, but something held us back ; thank God it 
was so. Meeting Dr. Cuyler, Medical Director, he exclaimed, 'Here is work 
for you !' He, poor man, was completely overwhelmed with the general care 
of all the hospitals at Old Point, and added to these, these mammoth floating 



152 WOMAJ^'S WORK I]S^ THE CIVIL WAE. 

hospitals, which are coming in from day to day with their precious cargoes. 
Without any previous notice, they anchor, and send to him for supplier, which 
it would be extremely difficult to improvise, even in our large cities, and quite 
impossible at Old Point. ' No bakeries, no stores, except small sutlers.' The ' 
bread had all to be baked ; the boat rationed for two days ; eight hundred on 
board. 

" When we went aboard, the first cry we met was for tea and bread. ' For 
God's sake, give us bread,' came from many of our wounded soldiers. Others 
shot in the face or neck, begged for liquid food. With feelings of a mixed cha- 
racter, shame, indignation, and sorrow blending, we turned away to see what 
resources we could muster to meet the demand. A box of tea, a barrel of corn- 
meal, sundry parcels of dried fruit, a few crackers, ginger cakes, dried rusk, 
sundry jars of jelly and of pickles, were seized upon, soldiers and contrabands 
impressed into service, all the cooking arrangements of three families appro- 
priated, by permission, and soon three pounds of tea were boiling, and many 
gallons of gruel blubbering. In the meantime, all the bread we could buy, 
twenty-five loaves, were cut into slices a.nd jellied, pickles were got in readiness, 
and in an incredibly short time, we were back to our poor sufferers. 

'^ When we carried in bread, hands from every quarter were outstretched, 
and the cry, ' Give me a piece, O please ! I have had nothing since Monday ;' 
another, 'Nothing but hard crackers since the fight,' etc. When we had dealt 
out nearly all the bread, a surgeon came in, and cried, ' Do please keep some 
for the poor fellows in the hold; they are so badly off" for everything.' So 
with the remnant we threaded our way through the suffering crowd, amid such 
exclamations as ' Oh ! please don't touch my foot,' or, ' For mercy's sake, don't 
touch my arm;' another, 'Please don't move the blanket; I am so terribly cut 
up,' down to the hold, in which were not less than one hundred and fifty, nearly 
all sick, some very sick. It was like plunging into a vapor bath, so hot, close, 
and full of moisture, and then in this dismal place, we distributed our bread, 
oranges, and pickles, which were seized upon with avidity. And here let me 
say, at least twenty of them told us next day that the pickles had done them 
more good than all the medicine they had taken. The tea was carried all 
around in buckets, sweetened, but no milk in it. How much we wished for 
some concentrated milk. The gruel, into which we had put a goodly quantity 
of wine, was relished, you cannot know how much. One poor wounded boy, 
exhausted with the loss of blood and long fasting, looked up after taking the 
first nourishment he could swallow since the battle of Saturday, then four days, 
and exclaimed, with face radiant with gratitude and pleasure, 'Oh ! that is life 
to me ; I feel as if twenty years were given me to live.' He was shockingly 
wounded about the neck and face, and could only take liquid food from a feed- 
ing-cup, of which they had none on board. We left them four, together with a 



MES. JOHN HAERIS. 153 

number of tin dishes, spoons, etc. After hours spent in this wa^ , we returned 
to the Hygeia Hospital, stopping on our way to stew a quantity of dried fruit, 
which served for supper, reaching the Hygeia wet through and through, every 
garment saturated. Disrobed, and bathing with bay rum, was glad to lie down, 
every bone aching, and head and heart throbbing, unwilling to cease work 
where so much was to be done, and yet wholly unable to do more. There I 
lay, with the sick, wounded, and dying all around, and slept from sheer exhaus- 
tion, the last sounds falling upon my ear being groans from the operating 
room." 

Her ministrations to the wounded on the Vanderbilt were 
unexpectedly prolonged by the inability of the officers to get the 
necessary supplies on board, but two days after she was on the 
Knickerbocker, a Sanitary Commission Transport, and on her 
way to White House Landing where in company with Miss Char- 
lotte Bradford, she spent the whole night on tlie Transport 
Louisiana, dressing and caring for the wounded. When she left 
the boat at eleven o'clock the next night she was obliged to wash 
all her skirts which were saturated with the mingled blood of 
the Union and Confederate soldiers which covered the floor, as 
she kneeled between them to wash their faces. She had torn up 
all her spare clothing which could be of use to them for bandages 
and compresses. From White House she proceeded to the battle- 
ground of Fair Oaks, and presently pitched her tent on the 
Dudley Farm, near Savage Station, to be near the group of field 
hospitals, to which the wounded in the almost daily skirmishes 
and the sick smitten with that terrible Chickahominy fever 
were sent. 

The provision made by the Medical Bureau of the Govern- 
ment at this time for the care and comfort of the wounded and 
fever-stricken was small and often inappropriate. Where tents 
were provided, they were either of the wedge pattern or the 
bivouacking tent of black cloth, and in the hot sun of a Virginia 
summer absorbed the sun's rays till they were like ovens ; many 
of the sick were put into the cabins and miserable shanties of the 
vicinity, and not unfrequently in the attics of these, where amid 

20 



154 

the intense heat they were left without food or drink except when 
the Sanitary Commission's agents or some of the ladies connected 
with other organizations, like Mrs. Harris, ministered to their 
necessities. One case of this kind, not by any means the worst, 
but told with a simple pathos deserves to be quoted : 

" Passing a forlorn-looking house, we were told by a sentinel that a young 
Captain of a Maine regiment laid in it very sick ; we went in, no door obstruct- 
ing, and there upon a stretcher in a corner of the room opening directly upon 
the road lay an elegant-looking youth struggling with the last great enemy. 
His mind wandered ; and as we approached him he exclaimed : ' Is it not cruel 
to keep me here when my mother and sister, whom I have not seen for a year, 
are in the next room ; they might let me go in ?' His mind continued to wan- 
der ; only for an instant did he seem to have a glimpse of the reality, when he 
drew two rings from his finger, placed there by a loving mother and sister, 
handed them to an attendant, saying: 'Carry tliem home,' and then he was 
amid battle scenes, calling out, ' Deploy to the left ;' ' Keep out of that ambus- 
cade ;' 'Now go, my braves, double quick, and strike for your flag! On, on,' 
and he threw up his arms as if cheering them, 'you'll win the day ;' and so he 
continued to talk, whilst death was doing its terrible work. As we looked upon 
the beautiful face and manly form, and thought of the mother and sister in 
their distant home, surrounded by every luxury wealth could purchase, worlds 
seemed all too cheap to give to have him with them. But this could not be. 
The soldier of three battles, he was not willing to admit that he was sick until 
his strength failed, and he was actually dying. He was carried to this cheer- 
less room, a rude table the only furniture ; no door, no window-shutters ; the 
western sun threw its hot rays in upon him, — no cooling shade for his fevered 
brow : and so he lay unconscious of the monster's grasp, which would not relax 
until he had done his work. His last expressions told of interest in his men. 
He was a graduate of Waterville College. Twenty of his company graduated 
at the same institution. He was greatly beloved; his death, even in this Gol- 
gotha, was painfully impressive. There was no time to talk to him of that 
spirit-land upon which he was so soon to enter. Whispered a few verses of 
Scripture into his ear ; he looked with a sweet smile and thanked me, but his 
manner betokened no appreciation of the sacred words. He was an only son. 
His mother and sister doted on him. He had everything to bind him to life, 
but the mandate had gone forth." 

Of the scenes of the retreat from the Chickahominy to Harri- 
son's Landing, Mrs. Harris was an active and deeply interested 



MRS. JOHN HARRIS. 155 

witness; she remained at Savage Station caring for the wounded, 
for some time, and then proceeded to Seven Pines, where a day 
was passed in preparing the wounded for the operations deemed 
necessary, obtaining, at great personal peril, candles to light the 
darkness of the field hospital, and was sitting down, completely 
exhausted with her trying and wearisome labors, when an army 
chaplain, an exception it is to be hoped to most of his profession, 
in his unwillingness to serve the wounded, came to her and said, 
^'They have just brought in a soldier with a leg blown off; he is 
in a horrible condition; could you wash him?^^ Wearied as she 
was, she performed the duty tenderly, but it was scarcely finished 
when death claimed him. Her escape to White House, and 
thence to Harrison's Landing, w^as made not a minute too soon ; 
she was obliged to abandon her stores, and to come off on the 
steamer in a borrowed bonnet. 

At this trying time, her constitutional tendency to despondency 
took full possession of her. " The heavens are filled with black- 
ness,'' she writes; "I find myself on board the Nelly Baker, on 
my way to City Point, with supplies for our poor army, if we 
still have one; I am not always hopeful, you see. * * * Alarm- 
ing accounts come to us. Prepare for the worst, but hope for the 
best. We do not doubt we are in a very critical condition, out 
of which only the Most High can bring us." This is not the 
language of fear or cowardice. There was no disposition on her 
part to seek her own personal safety, but while she despaired of 
success, she was ready to brave any danger for the sake of the 
wounded soldiers. This courage in the midst of despair, is really 
greater than that of the battle-field. 

The months of July and August, 1862, except a brief visit 
home, were spent at Harrison's Landing, amid the scenes of dis- 
tress, disease, wounds and suffering, which abounded there. The 
malaria of the Chickahominy swamps had done much to demora- 
lize the finest army ever put into the field; tens of thousands 
were ill with it, and these, with the hosts of wounded accumu- 



156 woman's work in the civil wae. 

lated more rapidly than the transports, numerous as they were, 
could carry them away. Their condition at Harrison's Landing 
was pitiable; the medical bureau seemed to have shared in the 
general demoralization. The proper diet, the necessaiy hospital 
arrangements, everything required for the soldiers' restoration to 
health, was wanting; the pasty, adhesive mud was everywhere, 
and the hospital tents, old, mildewed, and leaky, were pitched in 
it, and no floors provided; hard tack, salt junk, fat salt pork, 
and cold, greasy bean soup, was the diet provided for men suffer- 
ing from typhoid fever, and from wounds which rendered liquid 
food indispensable. Soft bread was promised, but was not 
obtained till just before the breaking up of the encampment. 
Nor was the destitution of hospital clothing less complete. In 
that disastrous retreat across the peninsula, many of the men had 
lost their knapsacks; the government did not provide shirts, 
drawers, undershirts, as well as mattresses, sheets, blankets, 
etc., in anything like the quantity needed, and men had often 
lain for weeks without a change of clothing, in the mud and 
filth. So far as a few zealous workers could do it, Mrs. Harris, 
and her willing and active coadjutors sought to remedy these 
evils; the clothing, and the more palatable and appropriate food 
they could and did provide for most of those who remained. 
Having accomplished all for these which she could, and the army 
having left the James River, after spending a few days at the 
hospitals near Fortress Monroe, Mrs. Harris came up the Poto- 
mac in one of the Government transports, reaching Alexandria 
on the 31st of August. Here she found ample employment in 
bestowing her tender care upon the thousands of wounded from 
Pope's campaigns. 

On the 8th of September, she followed, with her supplies, the 
army on its march toward South Mountain and Antietam. Slie 
reached Antietam the day after the battle, and from that time till 
the 3rd of November, aided by a corps of most devoted and 
earnest laborers in the work of mercy, among v/liom were Mrs. 



MRS. JOH^N^ HARRIS. 157 

M. M. Husband, Miss M. M. C. Hall, Mrs. Mary W. Lee, Miss 
Tyson, and others. Mrs. Harris gave herself to the work of 
caring for the wounded. Sad were the sights she was often 
called to witness. She bore ample testimony to the patience and 
the uncomplaining spirit of our soldiers; to their filial devotion, 
to the deep love of home, and the dear ones left behind, which 
would be manifested in the dying hour, by brave, noble-hearted 
men, and to the patriotism which even in the death agony, made 
them rejoice to lay down their lives for their country. 

Early in November, 1862, Mrs. Harris left Smoketown 
General Hospital, near Antietam, and came to Washington. In 
the hospitals in and around that city thirty thousand sick and 
wounded men were lying, some of them well and tenderly cared 
for, some like those in the Parole and Convalescent Camps near 
Alexandria, (the ^^Camp Misery'^ of those days), suffering from 
all possible privations. She did all that she could to supply the 
more pressing needs of these poor men. After a few weeks spent 
in the vicinity of the Capitol, news of the disastrous battle of 
Fredericksburg came to Washington. Though deeply depressed 
by the intelligence, she hastened to the front to do what she 
could for the thousands of sufferers. From this time till about 
the middle of June, 1863, Mrs. Harris had her quarters in the 
Lacy House, Falmouth, and aided by Mrs. Beck and Mrs. Lee, 
worked faithfully for the soldiers, taking measures to relieve and 
cure the ailing, and to prevent illness from the long and severe 
exposures to which the troops were subject on picket duty, or 
special marches, through that stormy and inclement winter. 
This work was in addition to that in the camp iand field hospitals 
of the Sixth Corps. Another part of her work and one of special 
interest and usefulness, was the daily and Sabbath worship at 
her rooms, in which such of the soldiers as were disposed, par- 
ticipated. The contrabands were also the objects of her sym- 
pathy and care, and she assembled them for religious worship and 
instruction on the Sabbath. 



158 

But the invasion of Pennsylvania was approaching, and she 
went forward to Harrisburg, which was at first thought to be 
threatened, on the 25th of June. After two or three days, find- 
ing that there was no probability of an immediate battle there, 
she returned to Philadelphia, and thence to Washington, which 
she reached on the 30th of June. The next three days were 
spent in the effort to forward hospital stores, and obtain trans- 
portation to Gettysburg. The War Department then, as in most 
of the great battles previously, refused to grant this privilege, 
and though she sought with tears and her utmost powers of per- 
suasion, the permission to forward a single car-load of stores, she 
was denied, even on the 3rd of July. She could not be 
restrained, however, from going where she felt that her services 
would be imperatively needed, and at five P. M., of the 3rd of 
July, she left Washington carrying only some chloroform and a 
few stimulants, reached Westminster at four A. M., of the 4th, 
and was carried to the battle-field of Gettysburg, in the ambu- 
lance which had brought the wounded General Hancock to 
Westminster. The next week was spent day and night amid the 
horrors of that field of blood, horrors which no pen can describe. 
That she and her indefatigable aid, (this time a young lady from 
Philadelphia), were able to alleviate a vast amount of suffering, 
to give nourishment to many who were famishing; to dress 
hundreds of wounds, and to point the dying sinner to the 
Saviour, or whisper words of consolation to the agonized heart, 
was certain. On the night of the 10th of July, Mrs. Harris and 
her friend Miss B. left for Frederick, Maryland, where a battle 
was expected; but as only skirmishing took place, they kept on 
to Warrenton and Warrenton Junction, where their labors were 
incessant in caring for the great numbers of wounded and sick 
in the hospitals. Constant labor had so far impaired her health, 
that on the 18th of August she attempted to get away from her 
work for a few days rest; but falling in with the sick men of the 
Sixth Michigan Cavalry, she went to work with her usual zeal 



MES. JOHN HAEEIS. 159 

to prepare food and comforts for them, and when they were 
supplied returned to her work; going to Culpepper Court House, 
where there were four hospitals, and remaining there till the last 
of September. 

The severe battle of Chickamauga, occurring on the 19th and 
20th of September, roused her to the consciousness of the great 
field for labor, offered by the Western armies, and about the 1st of 
October, she went to Nashville, Tennessee, taking her friends Miss 
Tyson and Mrs. Beck with her. It was her intention to go on 
to Chattanooga, but she found it impossible at that time to pro- 
cure transportation, and she and her friends at once commenced 
work among the refugees, the " poor white trash,^' who were then 
crowding into Nashville. For a month and more they labored 
zealously, and with good results, among these poor, ignorant, but 
loyal people, and then Mrs. Harris, after a visit to Louisville to 
provide for the inmates of the numerous hospitals in Nashville, a 
Thanksgiving dinner, pushed forward to the front, reaching 
Bridgeport, on the 28th of November, and Chattanooga the next 
day. Here she found abundant work, but her protracted labors 
had overtasked her strength, and she was for several weeks so ill 
that her life was despaired of. She was unable to resume her 
labors until the latter pai*t of January, 1864, and then she 
worked with a will for the half starved soldiers in the hospitals, 
among whom scurvy and hospital gangrene were prevailing. 
After two months of faithful labor among these poor fellows, she 
went back to Nashville, and spent four or five months more 
among the refugees. She returned home early in May, 1864, 
hoping to take a brief period of rest, of which she was in great 
need ; but two weeks later, she was in Fredericksburg, attending 
to the vast numbers of wounded brought from the battles of the 
Wilderness and Spottsylvania, and followed on with that sad 
procession of the wounded, the dead, and the dying, to Port 
Royal, White House, and City Point. Never had been there so 
much need for her labors, and she toiled on, though suffering 



160 



from constant prostration of strength, until the close of June, 
when she was obliged to relinquish labor for a time, and restore 
the almost exhausted vital forces. In September, she was again 
in the field, this time with the Army of the Shenandoah, at Win- 
chester, where she ministered to the wounded for some weeks. 
She was called home to attend her mother in her last illness, and 
for three or four months devoted herself to this sacred duty. 
Early in the spring of 1865, she visited North Carolina, and all 
the sympathy of her nature was called out in behalf of the poor 
released prisoners from Andersonville and Salisbury, to w^hom 
she ministered with her usual faithfulness. At the close of the 
war, she returned to her home, more an invalid than ever from 
the effects of a sun-stroke received while in attendance on a field 
hospital in Virginia. 



MRS. ELIZA C. PORTER. 



^^^^^ RS. ELIZA C. PORTER, the subject of the following 
sketch, is the wife of the Rev. Jeremiah Porter, a Pres- 
byterian clergyman of Chicago, Illinois. 

Of all the noble band of Western women who dur- 
ing the late war devoted time, thought, and untiring exertions to 
the care of our country's defenders, very few, if any are more worthy 
of honorable mention, and the praise of a grateful nation, than 
Mrs. Porter. Freely she gave all, withholding not even the most 
precious of her possessions and efforts — her husband, her sons, 
her time and strength, the labor of hands and brain, and, above 
all, her prayers. Few indeed at a time when sacrifices were 
general, and among the women of our country the rule rather 
than the exception, made greater sacrifices than she. Her home 
was broken up, and the beloved circle scattered, each member in 
his or her own appropriate sphere, actively engaged in the great 
work which the war unfolded. 

A correspondent thus describes Mrs. Porter- "Mrs. Porter is 
from forty-five to fifty years of age, a quiet, modest, lady-like 
woman, very gentle in her manners, and admirably qualified to 
soothe, comfort and care for the sick and wounded." But this 
description, by no means includes, or does justice to the admi- 
rable fitness for the work which her labors have developed, her 
quiet energy, her great executive and organizing ability, and her 
tact ever displayed in doing and saying the right thing at pre- 
cisely the right time. Of the value of this latter qualification 

21 161 



162 woman's wdek IX the civil war. 

few can form an estimate who have not seen excellent and praise- 
worthy exertions so often wither unfruitfully for the lack alone 
of an adjunct so nearly indispensable. 

Mrs. Porter was early stimulated to exertion and sacrifice. 
In the spring of 1861, immediately after the breaking out of the 
war, while sitting one morning at her breakfast table, her hus- 
band, eldest son and two nephews being present, she exclaimed 
fervently; "If I had a hundred sons, I would gladly send them 
all forth to this work of putting down the rebellion." 

The three young men then present all entered the army. One 
of them after three years' service was disabled by wounds and 
constant labor. The other two gave themselves anew to their 
country, all they could give. 

During the summer of 1861 Mrs. Porter visited Cairo where 
hospitals had been established, and in her labors and experiences 
there carried what things were most needed by the sick and 
wounded soldiers. In October of that year, Illinois was first 
roused to co-operation in the work of the Sanitary Commission. 
The Northwestern Sanitary Commission was established, and at 
the request of Mr. E. W. Blatchford and others, Mrs. Porter was 
induced to take charge of the Commission Rooms which were 
opened in Chicago. Her zeal and abilities, as well as the hos- 
pital experiences of the summer, had fitted her for the arduous 
task, and as opening to her a field of great usefulness, she 
accepted the appointment. How she devoted herself to that 
work, at what sacrifice of family comfort, and with what success, 
is well known to the Commission, and to thousands of its early 
contributors. 

In April, 1862, she became satisfied that she could be more 
useful in the field, by taking good nurses to the army hospitals, 
and herself laboring with them. Her husband, who the previous 
winter had been commissioned as Chaplain of the First Illinois 
Light Artillery, was then at Cairo, where he had been ordered 
to laboi in hospitals; and Mrs. Porter/ visiting Cairo and Pa- 



MRS. ELIZA C. PORTER. 163 

diicali, entered earnestly into the work of placing the nurses she 
had brought with her from Chicago. Some of these devoted 
themselves constantly to the service^ and proved equally suc- 
cessful and valuable. 

At Cairo, Mrs. Porter made the acquaintance of Miss Mary 
J. Saiford, since known as the "Cairo Angel," and co-operating 
with her there, and with Mr. Porter and various surgeons and 
philanthropists, aided in receiving, and temporarily caring for 
seven hundred men from the field of Pittsburgh Landing, and in 
transferring them to the hospitals of Mound City, Illinois. 

From four o'clock in the morning until ten at night, Mrs. 
Porter and her friends labored, and then, their work accomplished 
and their suffering charges made as comfortable as circumstances 
would permit, they were forced, by the absence of hotel accommo- 
dations, to spend the night upon the steamer where the state- 
rooms being occupied, they slept upon chairs. 

Soon afterward she went, accompanied by Miss SafPord, to 
Pittsburgh Landing. There she obtained from the Medical 
Director, Dr. Charles McDougal, an order for several female 
nurses for his department. She hastened to Chicago, secured 
them, and accompanying them to Tennessee placed them at 
Savannah with Mrs. Mary Bickerdyke, who had been with the 
wounded since the battle of Shiloh. From thence she went to 
Corinth, then just taken by General Grant. She was accompa- 
nied by several benevolent ladies from Chicago, like herself bent 
on doing good to the sick and wounded. At Corinth she joined 
her husband, and he being ordered to join his regiment at Mem- 
})his, she went thither in his company. 

Here, principally in the hospital of the First Light Artillery 
at Fort Pickering, she labored through the summer of 1862, and 
afterwards returned to visit some of the southern towns of Illinois 
in search of stores from the farmers, which she added to the sup- 
plies forwarded by the Commission. 

While at Memphis, Mrs. Porter became deeply interested in 



164 woman's work in the civil war. 

the welfare of the escaped slaves and their families congregated 
there. 

Receiving aid from friends at the North, she organized a school 
for them, and spent all her leisure hours in giving them instruc- 
tion. One of the nurses she had brought thither desired to aid 
in the work, and obtaining needful books and charts she orga- 
nized a school for Miss Humphrey at Shiloh. 

Mrs. Porter was very successful in this work. In her youth 
she had gathered an infant school among the half-breed children 
at Mackinac and Point St. Ignace, and understood well how to 
deal with these minds scarce awakened from the dense slumber 
of ignorance. 

The school flourished, and others entered into the work, and 
other schools were established. Ministering to their temporal 
wants as well, clothing, feeding, medicating these unfortunate 
people, visiting their hospitals as well as those of the army, 
Mrs. Porter remained at* Memphis and in its vicinity until 
June, 1863. 

Her schools having by that time become well-established, and 
general interest in the scheme awakened, Mrs. Porter felt herself 
constrained to once more devote herself exclusively to the sol- 
diers, a large number of whom were languishing in Southern 
hospitals in an unhealthy climate. Failing in her attempts to 
get them rapidly removed to the [NTorth, through correspondence 
with the Governors of Ohio and Illinois, she went I^^orth for the 
purpose of obtaining interviews with these gentlemen. At Green 
Bay, Wisconsin, she joined Mrs. Governor Harvey, who was 
striving to obtain a State Hospital for Wisconsin. Here she pro- 
posed to Senator T. O. Howe to draft a petition to the President, 
praying for the establishment of such hospitals. Judge Howe 
was greatly pleased to comply, and accordingly drew up the 
petition to which Mrs. Howe and others obtained over eight 
thousand names. Mrs. Harvey desired Mrs. Porter to accom- 
pany her to Washington with the petition, but she declined, and 



MKS. ELIZA C. PORTER. 165 

Mrs. Harvey went alone, and as the result of her efforts, suc- 
ceeded in the establishment of the Harvey Hospital at Madison, 
Wisconsin. 

Other parties took up the matter in Illinois, and Mrs. Porter 
returned to her beloved work at the South, visiting Natchez and 
Vicksburg. At the latter place she joined Mrs. Harvey and 
Mrs. Bickerdyke, all three ministering by Sanitary stores and 
personal aid to the sick and wounded in hospitals and regiments. 

While on her way, at Memphis, she learned that the battery, 
in which were her eldest son and a nephew, had gone with 
Sherman's army toward Corinth, and started by rail to overtake 
them. At Corinth, standing in the room of the Sanitary Com- 
mission, she saw the battery pass in which were her boys. It 
was raining, and mud-bespattered and drenched, her son rode by 
in an ague chill, and could only give her a look of recognition as 
he passed on to the camp two miles beyond. The next morning 
she went out to his camp, but missed him, and returning found 
him at the Sanitary Rooms in another chill. The next day she 
nursed him through a third chill, and then parting she sent her 
sick boy on his way toward Knoxville and Chattanooga. 

After a short stay at Vicksburg she once more returned to 
Illinois to plead with Governor Yates to bring home his disabled 
soldiers, then went back, by way of Louisville and Nashville, to 
Huntsville, Alabama, where she met and labored indefatigably 
with Mrs. Lincoln Clark and her daughter, of Chicago, and Mrs. 
Bickerdyke. 

After a few weeks spent there in comforting the sick, pointing 
the dying to the Saviour, and ministering to surgeons, officers, 
and soldiers, she followed our conquering arms to Chattanooga, 
Resaca, Kingston, Allatoona Pass, Marietta and Atlanta. 

As a memorial of her earlier movements in this campaign, we 
extract the following letter from the Report for January and Feb- 
ruary, 1864, of the Northwestern Sanitary Commission. 

*^ From a mass of deeply interesting correspondence on hand, 



166 

we select the following letter from Eev. Mrs. Jeremiah Porter, 
whoj with Mrs. Bickerdyke, the widely known and very efficient 
Hospital Matron, has been laboring in the hospitals of the 15th 
Army Corps, most of the time since the battle of Chickamauga. 
Mrs. Bickerdyke was assigned to hospital duty in this corps, at 
the request of General Sherman, and is still actively engaged 
there. This letter affords glimpses of the hardships and priva- 
tions of our brave men, whose sufferings in Southern and Eastern 
Tennessee during the months of December and January, have 
been unparalleled." 

" In Camp, November 4th, Field Hospital, 
" Chattanooga, January 24, 1864. 

"I reached this place on New Year's Eve, making the trip of the few miles 
from Bridgeport to Chattanooga, in twenty-four hours. New Year's morning 
was very cold. I went immediately to the Field Hospital about two miles out 
of town, where I found Mrs. Bickerdyke hard at work, as usual, endeavoring to 
comfort the cold and suffering, sick and wounded. The work done on that day 
told most happily on the comfort of the poor wounded men. 

'' The wind came sweeping around Lookout Mountain, and uniting with cur- 
rents from the valleys of Mission Ridge, pressed in upon the hospital tents, 
overturning some, and making the inmates of all tremble with cold and anxious 
fear. The cold had been preceded by a great rain, which added to the general 
discomfort. Mrs. Bickerdyke went from tent to tent in the gale, carrying hot 
bricks and hot drinks to warm and to cheer the poor fellows. ' She is a power 
of good,' said one soldier. 'We fared mighty poor till she came here,' said 
another. ' God bless the Sanitary Commission,' said a third, ' for sending women 
among us !' The soldiers fully appreciate ' Mother Bickerdyke,' as they call 
her, and her work. 

"Mrs. Bickerdyke left Vicksburg at the request of General Sherman, and 
other officers of his corps, as they wished to secure her services for the then 
approaching battle. The Field Hospital of the 15tli (Sherman's) Army Corps, 
was situated on the north bank of the Genesee river, on a slope at the base of 
Mission Eidge, where, after the struggle was over, seventeen hundred of our 
wounded and exhausted soldiers were brought. Mrs. Bickerdyke reached there 
before the din and smoke of battle were well over, and before all were brought 
from the field of blood and carnage. There she remained the only female 
attendant for four weeks. Never has she rendered more valuable service. Dr. 
Newberry arrived in Chattanooga with Sanitary goods which Mrs. Bickerdyke 
had the pleasure of using, as she says, 'just when and where needed,' and never 



MES. ELIZA C. PORTER. 167 

were Sanitary goods more deeply felt to be good goods. 'What could we do 
without them?' is a question I often hear raised, and answered with a hearty 
' God bless the Sanitary Commission !' which is now, everywhere, acknowledged 
as a great power for good. 

" The Field Hospital was in a forest, about five miles from Chattanooga, wood 
was abundant, and the camp was warmed by immense burning 'log heaps,' 
which were the only fire-places or cooking-stoves of the camp or hospitals. 
Men were detailed to fell the trees and pile the logs to heat the air, which was 
very wintry. And beside them Mrs. Bickerdyke made soup and toast, tea and 
coflee, and broiled mutton, without a gridiron, often blistering her fingers in 
the process. A house in due time was demolished to make bunks for the worst 
cases, and the brick from the chimney was converted into an oven, when Mrs. 
Bickerdyke made bread, yeast having been found in the Chicago boxes, and 
flour at a neighboring mill, which had furnished flour to secessionists through 
the war until now. Great multitudes were fed from these rude kitchens. Com- 
panies of hungry soldiers were refreshed before those open fire-places, and from 
those ovens. On one occasion, a citizen came and told the men to follow him, 
he would show them a reserve of beef and sheep which had been provided for 
General Bragg's army, and about thirty head of cattle and twenty sheep was 
the prize. Large potash kettles were found, which were used over the huge log 
fires, and various kitchen utensils for cooking were brought into camp from 
time to time, almost every day adding to our conveniences. After four weeks 
of toil and labor, all the soldiers who were able to leave were furloughed home, 
and the rest brought to the large hospital where I am now located. About nine 
hundred men are here, most of them convalescents, and waiting anxiously to 
have the men and mules supplied with food, so that they may have the benefit 
of the cars, which have been promised to take them home. 

"There was great joy in the encampment last week, at the announcement of 
the arrival of a train of cars from Bridgeport. You at home can have little 
appreciation of the feelings of the men as that sound greeted their ears. Our 
poor soldiers had been reduced to half and quarter rations for weeks, and those 
of the poorest quality. The mules had fallen by the wayside from very starva- 
tion. You cannot go a mile in any direction without seeing these animals 
lying dead from starvation — and this state of things had to continue until tj^e 
railroad was finished to Chattanooga, and the cars could bring in sustenance for 
man and beast. You will not wonder then at the huzzas of the men in the hos- 
pitals and camps, as the whistle of the long looked for train was heard. 

"The most harrowing scenes are daily witnessed here. A wife came on yes- 
terday only to learn that her dear husband had died the morning previous. Her 
lamentations were heart-breaking. ' Why could he not have lived until I came ? 
Why?' In the evening came a sister, whose aged parents had sent her to 



168 woman's woek in the civil war. 

search for their only son. She also came too late. The brother had gone to 
the soldier's grave two days previous. One continued wail of sorrow goes up 
from all parts of this stricken land. 

" I have protracted this letter, I fear, until you are weary. I write in great 
haste, not knowing how to take the time from pressing duties which call me 
everywhere. Yours, etc., 

"Eliza C. Pokteh." 

In illustration of her services at this time, and of the undercur- 
rent of terror and sadness of this triumphal march, we can do no 
better than to give some extracts from her journal, kept during 
this period, and published without her knowledge in the Sanitary 
Commission Bulletin. It was commenced on the 15th of May, 
1864, as she was following Mrs. Bickerdyke to Ringgold, Georgia. 
Together they arrived at Sugar Creek, where but two miles dis- 
tant the battle was raging, and spent the night at General Logan's 
headquarters, within hearing of its terrific sounds. All night, 
and all day Sunday, they passed thus, not being permitted to go 
upon the field, but caring for the wounded as rapidly as possible, 
as they were brought to the rear. She says : 

^^The wounded were brought into hospitals, quickly and 
roughly prepared in the forest, as near the field as safety would 
permit. What a scene w^as presented ! Precious sons of northern 
mothers, beloved husbands of northern wives were already here 
to undergo amputation, to have wounds probed and dressed, or 
broken limbs set and bandaged. Some were writhing under the 
surgeon's knife, but bore their sufferings bravely and uncomplain- 
ingly. There were many whose wounds were considered slight, 
such as a shot through the hand, arm, or leg, which but for the 
contrast with severer cases, would seem dreadful. Never was the 
presence of women more joyfully welcomed. It was touching to 
see those precious boys looking up into our faces with such hope 
and gladness. It brought to their minds mother and home, as 
each testified, while his wounds were being dressed ; ^ This seems 
a little like having mother about,' was the reiterated expression 
of the wounded, as one after another was washed and had his 



MRS. ELIZA C. PORTER. 169 

wounds drp«^sed. Mrs. Bickerdyke and myself assisted in the 
operation. Poor boys ! how my heart ached that I could do so 
little. 

" After doing what we could in Hospital 'No. 1, to render the 
condition of the poor fellows tolerable, we proceeded to No. 2, and 
did what we could there, distributing our sanitary comforts in the 
most econonomical manner, so as to make them go as far as pos- 
sible. We found that what we brought in the ambulance was 
giving untold comfort to our poor exhausted wounded men, whose 
rough hospital couches were made by pine boughs with the stems 
cut out, spread upon the ground over which their blankets were 
thrown. This forms the bed, and the poor fellows' blouses, satu- 
rated with their own blood, is their only pillow, their knapsacks 
being left behind when they went into battle. More sanitary 
goods are on the way, and will be brouglit to relieve the men as 
soon as possible.'' 

Amidst all this care for others, there was little thought for her 
own comfort. She says in another place : 

"Our bed was composed of dry leaves, spread with a rubber 
and soldier's blanket — our own blankets, with pillows and all, 
having been given out to sufferers long before night." 

In this diary we find another illustration of ]ier extreme 
modesty. Though intended but for the eyes of her own family, 
she says much of Mrs. Bickerdyke's work, and but little of her 
own. Two, three, or four hundred men, weary and exhausted, 
would be sent to them, and they must exert every nerve to feed 
them, while they snatched a little rest. Pickles, sauer-kraut, 
coffee and hard bread they gave to these — for the sick and 
wounded they reserved their precious luxuries. With a fire made 
out of doors, beneath a burning sun, and in kettles such as they 
could find, and of no great capacity, they made coflPee, mush, and 
cooked dried fruit and vegetables, toiling unweariedly through 
the long hot days and far into the nights. Many of the men 
knew Mrs. Bickerdyke, for many of them she had nursed through 



170 woman's work in the civil wae. 

wounds and sickness during the two years she had been with this 
army, and she was saluted as ^^ Mother'' on all sides. Not less 
grateful were they to Mrs. Porter. Again she says : 

"The failing and faint-hearted are constantly coming in. They 
report themselves sick, and a few days of rest and nourishing 
food will restore most of them, but some have made their last 
march, and will soon be laid in a soldier's grave ! Mrs. Bicker- 
dyke has sent gruel and other food, which I have been distribut- 
ing according to the wants of the prostrate multitude, all on the 
floor. Some are very sick men. It is a pleasure to do some- 
thing for them. They are all dear to some circle, and are a noble 
company." 

Again she gives a sort of summary of her work in a letter, 
dated Kingston, Georgia, June 1st : '^ We have received, fed, and 
comforted at this hospital, during the past week, between four 
and five thousand wounded men, and still they come. All the 
food and clothing have passed under our supervision, and, indeed, 
almost every garment has been given out by our hands. Almost 
every article of special diet has been cooked by Mrs. Bickerdyke 
personally, and all has been superintended by her. I speak of 
this particularly, as it is a wonderful fulfillment of the promise, 
^As thy day is, so shall thy strength be.' " 

Again, writing from Alatoona, Georgia, June 14th : " I have 
just visited a tent filled with ^amputated cases.' They are noble 
young men, the pride and hope of loving families at the North, 
but most of them are so low that they will never again return to 
them. Each had a special request for ^ something that he could 
relish.' I made my way quickly down from the heights, where 
the hospital tents are pitched, and sought for the food they craved. 
I found it among the goods of the Sanitary Commission — and 
now the dried currants, cherries, and other fruit are stewing ; we 
have unsoddered cans containing condensed milk and preserved 
fruit — and the poor fellows will not be disappointed in their ex- 
pectations." 



MES. ELIZA C. PORTER. 171 

In the foregoing sketch we have given but a very brief state- 
ment of the labors and sacrifices of Mrs. Porter which were not 
intermitted until the close of the war. "VYe have said that her sons 
were in the army. Her eldest son re-enlisted at the close of his 
first term, and the youngest, after a hundred days' service, returned 
to college to fit himself for future usefulness in his regenerated 
country. Mr. Porter's services, as well as those of his wife were 
of great value, and her son, James B. Porter, though serving as 
a private only, in Battery A, First Illinois Liglit Artillery, has 
had frequent and honorable mention. 

At the close of Sherman's campaign Mrs. Porter finished her 
army service by caring for the travel-worn and w^earied braves as 
they came into camp at Washington where, with Mrs. Stephen 
Barker and others, she devoted herself to the distribution of sani- 
tary stores, attending the sick and in various ways comforting 
and relievino; all w^ho needed her aid after the toils of the Grand 
March. 



MRS. MARY A. BICKERDYKE. 



^1 MONG the hundreds who with untiring devotion have 
^\^| consecrated their services to the ministrations of mercy 
in the Armies of the Union, there is but one " Mother" 
Bicker dyke. Others may in various ways have made 
as great sacrifices, or displayed equal heroism, but her measures 
and methods have been peculiarly her own, and ^^none but her- 
self can be her parallel." 

She is a widow, somewhat above forty years of age, of humble 
origin, and of but moderate education, with a robust frame and 
great powers of endurance, and possessing a rough stirring elo- 
quence, a stern, determined will and extraordinary executive 
ability. No woman connected with the philanthropic work of 
the army has encountered more obstacles in the accomplishment 
of her purposes, and none ever carried them through more 
triimiphantly. She has two little sons, noble boys, to whom she 
is devotedly attached, but her patriotic zeal was even stronger 
than her love for her children, and she gave herself up to the 
cause of her country most unhesitatingly. 

At the commencement of the war, she was, it is said, house- 
keeper in the family of a gentleman in Cleveland, but she 
commenced her labors among the sick and wounded men of the 
army very early, and never relinquished her work until the close 
of the conflict. It has been one of her peculiarities that she 
devoted her attention almost exclusively to the care of the 




V-'^-^^'^^^" 



Mr s . MaPvY a. Bickerdyke . 



MES. MARY A. BICKERDYKE. 173 

private -soldiers; the officers, she said, had enough to look after 
them ; but it was the men, poor fellows, with but a private's pay, 
a private^s fare, and a private's dangers, to whom she was par- 
ticularly called. They were dear to somebody, and she would 
be a mother to them. And it should be said, to the honor of the 
private soldiers of the Western Armies, that they returned her 
kindness with very decided gratitude and affection. If they 
w^ere her ^^boys" as she always insisted, she was "Mother Bicker- 
dyke" to the whole army. Nothing could exceed the zeal and 
earnestness with which she has always defended their interests. 
For her " boys," she would brave everything ; if the surgeons or 
attendants at the hospitals were unfaithful, she denounced them 
with a terrible vehemence, and always managed to secure their 
dismission ; if the Government officers were slow or delinquent in 
forwarding needed supplies, they were sure to be reported at 
headquarters by her, and in such a way that their conduct w^ould 
be thoroughly investigated. Yet while thus stern and vindictive 
toward those who through negligence or malice wronged the 
soldiers of the army, no one could be more tender in dealing 
with the sick and wounded. On the battle-field, in the field, 
camp, post or general hospitals, her vigorous arm was ever ready 
to lift the wounded soldier as tenderly as his own mother could 
have done, and her ready skill was exerted with equal facility in 
dressing his wounds, or in preparing such nourishment for him 
as should call back his fleeting strength or tempt his fickle and 
failing appetite. She was a capital forager, and for the sake of a 
sick soldier she would undergo any peril or danger, and violate 
military rules without the least hesitation. For herself she 
craved nothing — would accept nothing — if "the boys in the 
hospital" could be provided for, she was supremely happy. The 
soldiers were ready to do anything in their power for her, while 
the contrabands regarded her almost as a divinity, and would fly 
witli unwonted alacrity to obey her commands. 

We are not certain whether she was an assistant in one of the 



174 

hospitals, or succored the wounded in any of the battles in Ken- 
tucky or Missouri, in the autumn of 1861 ; we believe she was 
actively engaged in ministering; to the wounded after the fall of 
Fort Donelson, and at Shiloh after the battle she rendered great 
and important services. It was here, or rather at Savannah, 
Tennessee, where one of the largest hospitals was established, 
soon after the battle, and placed in her charge, that she first met 
Mrs. Eliza C. Porter, who was afterward during Sherman^s 
Grand March her associate and companion. Mrs. Porter 
brought from Chicago a number of nurses, whom she placed 
under Mrs. Bickerdyke's charge. 

The care of this hospital occupied Mrs. Bickerdyke for some 
months, and we lose sight of her till the battle of Perrysville 
where amid difficulties which would have appalled any ordinary 
spirit, she succeeded in dressing the wounds of the soldiers and 
supplying them with nourishment. But with her untiring 
energy, she was not satisfied with this. Collecting a large num- 
ber of negro women who had escaped from the plantations along 
the route of the Union Army, she set them to work gathering 
the blankets and clothing left on the field, and such of the 
clothing of the slain and desperately wounded as could be spared, 
and having superintended the washing and repairing of these 
articles, distributed them to the wounded who were in great need 
of additional clothing. She also caused her corps of contrabands 
to pick up all the arms and accoutrements left on the field, and 
turn them over to the Union Quartermaster. Having returned 
after a time to Louisville, she was appointed Matron of the 
Gayoso Hospital, at Memphis. This hospital occupied the Gay- 
oso House, formerly the largest hotel in Memphis. It was Mrs. 
Bickerdyke's ambition to make this the best hospital of the six 
or eight in the city, some of them buildings erected for hospital 
purposes. A large hotel is not the best structure for a model 
hospital, but before her energy and industry all obstacles disap- 
peared. By an Army regulation or custom, convalescent soldiers 



MRS. MARY A. BICKERDYKE. 175 

were employed as nurses, attendants and ward-masters in the hos- 
pitals ; an arrangement which though on some accounts desirable, 
yet was on others objectionable. The soldiers not yet fully recov- 
ered, were often weak, and incapable of the proper performance of 
their duties ; they were often, also, peevish and fretful, and from 
sheer weakness slept at their posts, to the detriment of the 
patients. It was hardly possible with such assistance to maintain 
that perfect cleanliness so indispensable for a hospital. Mrs. 
Bickerdyke determined from the first that she would not have 
these convalescents as nurses and attendants in her hospital. 
Selecting carefully the more intelligent of the negro women who 
flocked into Memphis in great numbers, she assigned to them the 
severer work of the hospital, the washing, cleaning, waiting upon 
the patients, and with the aid of some excellent women nurses, 
paid by Government, she soon made her hospital by far the best 
regulated one in the city. The cleanliness and ventilation were 
perfect. The patients were carefully and tenderly nursed, their 
medicine administered at the required intervals, and the prepa- 
ration of the special diet being wholly under Mrs. Bickerdyke's 
supervision, herself a cook of remarkable skill, was admirably 
done. Nothing escaped her vigilance, and under her watchful 
care, the aifairs of the hospital were admirably managed. She 
would not tolerate any neglect of the men, either on the part of 
attendants, assistant surgeons or surgeons. 

On one occasion, visiting one of the wards containing the badly 
wounded men, at nearly eleven o'clock, A. M., she found that the 
assistant surgeon, in charge of that ward, who had been out on 
a drunken spree the night before, and had slept very late, had 
not yet made out the special diet list for the ward, and tlie men, 
faint and hungry, had had no breakfast. She denounced him at 
once in the strongest terms, and as he came in, and with an 
attempt at jollity inquired, "Hoity-toity, what's the matter?'^ 
she turned upon him with " Matter enough, you miserable scoun- 
drel ! Here these men, any one of them worth a thousand of you, 



176 

are suffered to starve and die, because you want to be off upon a 
drunk ! Pull off your shoulder-straps," she continued, as he tried 
feebly to laugh off her reproaches, " pull off your shoulder-straps, 
for you shall not stay in the army a week longer." The surgeon 
still, laughed, but he turned pale, for he knew her power. She 
was as good as her word. Within three days she had caused his 
discharge. He went to headquarters and asked to be reinstated. 
Major-General Sherman, who was then in command, listened 
patiently, and then inquired who had procured his discharge. 
" I was discharged in consequence of misrepresentation," answered 
the surgeon, evasively. " But who caused your discharge ?" per- 
sisted the general. '' Why," said the surgeon, hesitatingly, " I 
suppose it was that woman, that Mrs. Bickerdyke." ^^ Oh !" said 
Sherman, ^^ well, if it was her, I can do nothing for you. She 
ranks me." 

We may say in this connection, that the commanding generals 
of the armies in w^hich Mrs. Bickerdyke performed her labors. 
Generals Sherman, Hurlburt, Grant, and Sherman again, in his 
great march, having become fully satisfied how invaluable she 
was in her care of the privatv^ soldiers, were always ready to listen 
to her appeals and to grant h r requests. She was, in particular, 
a great favorite with both Grant and Sherman, and had only to 
ask for anything she needed to get it, if it was within the power 
of the commander to obtain it It should be said in justice to 
her, that she never asked an_y thing for herself, and that her 
requests were always for someth ng that would promote the wel- 
fare of the men. 

Some months after the dischar >'e of the assistant surgeon, the 
surgeon in charge of the hospital, who was a martinet in disci- 
pline, and somewhat irritated for some cause, resolved, in order 
to annoy her, to compel the discharge of the negro nurses and 
attendants, and require her to employ convalescent soldiers, as 
the other hospitals were doing. Foi* this purpose he procured 
from the medical director an order that none but convalescent 



MES. MARY A. BICKERDYKE. 177 

soldiers should be employed as nurses in the Memphis hospitals. 
The order was issued^ probably, without any knowledge of the 
annoyance it was intended to cause Mrs. Bickerdyke. It was to 
take effect at nine o'clock the following morning. Mrs. Bicker- 
dyke heard of it just at night. The Gayoso Hospital was nearly 
three-fourths of a mile from headquarters. It was raining heavily, 
and the mud was deep ; but she was not the woman to be thwarted 
in her plans by a hospital surgeon, without a struggle ; so, nothing 
daunted, she sallied out, having first had the form of an order 
drawn up, permitting the employment of contrabands as nurses, 
at the Gayoso Hospital. Arrived at headquarters, she was told 
that the commanding general, Sherman's successor, was ill and 
could not be seen. Suspecting that his alleged illness was onl}' 
another name for over-indulgence in strong drink, she insisted 
that she must and would see hirq, and in spite of the objections 
of his staff-officers, forced her way to his room, and finding him in 
bed, roused him partially, propped him up, put a pen in his hand, 
and made him sign the order she had brought. This done, she 
returned to her hospital, and the next morning, when the surgeon 
and medical director came arorad to enforce the order of the 
latter, she quietly handed them, the order of the commanding- 
general, permitting her to retain her contrabands. 

While in charge of this hospital, she made several journeys to 
Chicago and other cities of the "^N^orthwest, to procure aid for the 
suffering soldiers. The first of these were characteristic of her 
energy and resolution. She had found great difficult)^ in pro- 
curing, in the vicinity of Memphis, the milk, butter, and eggs 
needed for her hospital. She had foraged from the secessionists, 
had traded with them her ow clothing and whatever else slie 
could spare, for these necessaries for her ^^boys,'' until there was 
nothing more left to trade. The other hospitals were in about the 
same condition. She resolved, therefore, to have a dairy for the 
hospitals. Going among the farmers of Central Illinois, she 
begged two hundred cows and a thousand hens, and returned in 

2-A 



178 wo:\rAN's work in the ci^n:L war. 

triumpli with her flock of hens and her di'ove of cows. On 
reaching Memphis, her cattle and fowls made such a lowing and 
cackling, that the secessionists of the city entered their complaints 
to the commanding general, who assigned her an island in the 
Mississippi, opposite the city, where her dairy and hennery were 
comfortably accommodated. It was we believe, while on this 
expedition that, at the request of Mrs. Hoge and ]Mrs. Livermore, 
the Associate Managers of the Northwestern Sanitary Commis- 
sion, she visited Milwaukie, Wisconsin. The Ladies' Aid Society 
of that city had memorialized their Chamber of Commerce to 
make an appropriation to aid them in procuring supplies for the 
wounded soldiers, and were that day to receive the reply of the 
chamber. 

Mrs. Bickerdyke went with the ladies, and the President of 
the Chamber, in his blandest tones, informed them that the 
Chamber of Commerce had considered their request, but that 
they had expended so much recently in fitting out a regiment, 
that they thought they must be excused from making any contri- 
butions to the Ladies' Aid Society. Mrs. Bickerdyke asked the 
privilege of saying a few words in the way of answer. For half 
an hour she held them enchained while she described, in simple 
but eloquent language, the life of the private soldier, his priva- 
tions and sufferings, the patriotism which animated him, and led 
him to endure, without murmuring, hardships, sickness, and 
even death itself, for his country. She contrasted this with the 
sordid love of gain which not only shrank from these sacrifices 
in person, but grudged the pittance necessary to alleviate them, 
while it made the trifling amount it had already contributed, an 
excuse for making no further donations, and closed with this 
forcible denunciation : " And you, merchants and rich men of 
Milwaukie, living at your ease, dressed in your broad-cloth, 
knowing little and caring less for the sufferings of these soldiers 
from hunger and thirst, from cold and nakedness, from sickness 
and wounds, from pain and death, all incurred that you may roll 



MRS. MARY A. BICKERDYKE. 179 

in wealth, and your homes and little ones be safe ; jou will refuse 
to give aid to these poor soldiers, because, forsooth, you gave a 
few dollars some time ago to fit out a regiment ! Shame on you — 
you are not men — ^you are cowards — go over to Canada — this 
country has no place for such creatures V^ The Chamber of Com- 
merce was not prepared for such a rebuke, and they reconsidered 
their action, and made an appropriation at once to the Ladies' Aid 
Society. 

Immediately after the surrender of A'^icksburg, Mrs. Bicker- 
dyke surrendered her hospital at Memphis into other hands, and 
went thither to care for the wounded. She accompanied Sher- 
man's corps in their expedition to Jackson, and amid all the hard- 
ships and exposures of the field, ministered to the sick and 
wounded. Cooking for them in the open air, under the burning 
sun and the heavy dews, she was much exposed to the malarious 
fevers of that sickly climate, but her admirable constitution 
enabled her to endure fatigue and exposure, better even than most 
of the soldiers. Though always neat and cleanly in person, she 
was indifferent to the attractions of] dress, and amid the flying 
sparks from her fires in the open air, her calico dresses would 
often take fire, and as she expressed it, ^4he soldiers would put 
her out,'' i. e. extinguish the sparks which were burning her 
dresses. In this way it happened that she had not a single 
dress which had not been more or less riddled by these sparks. 
With her clothing in this plight she visited Chicago again late in 
the summer of 1863, and the ladies of the Sanitary Commission 
replenished her wardrobe, and soon after sent her a box of ex- 
cellent clothing for her own use. Some of the articles in this box, 
the gift of those who admired her earnest devotion to the interests 
of the soldiers, were richly wrought and trimmed. Among these 
were two elegant night dresses, trimmed with ruffles and lace. 
On receiving the box, Mrs. Bickerdyke, who was again for the 
time in charge of a hospital, reserving for herself only a few of 
the plainest and cheapest articles, traded off the remainder, ex- 



180 



cept the two night dresses, with the rebel women of the vicinity, 
for butter, eggs, and other delicacies for her sick soldiers, and as 
she purposed going to Cairo soon, and thought that the night 
dresses would bring more for the same purpose in Tennessee or 
Kentucky, she reserved them to be traded on her journey. On 
her way, however, at one of the towns on the Mobile and 
Ohio railroad, she found two poor fellows who had been dis- 
charged from some of the hospitals with their wounds not yet 
fully healed, and their exertions in traveling had caused them to 
break out afresh. Here they were, in a miserable shanty, sick, 
bleeding, hungry, penniless, and with only their soiled clothing. 
Mrs. Bickerdyke at once took them in hand. Washing their 
wounds and staunching the blood, she tore off the lower portions 
of the night dresses for bandages, and as the men had no shirts, 
she arrayed them in the remainder of these dresses, ruffles, lace, 
and all. The soldiers modestly demurred a little at the ruffles 
and lace, but Mrs. Bickerdyke suggested to them that if any 
inquiries were made, they could say that they had been plun- 
dering the secessionists. 

Visiting Chicago at this time, she was again invited to Mil- 
waukie, and went with the ladies to the Chamber of Commerce. 
Here she was very politely received, and the President informed 
her that the Chamber feeling deeply impressed with the good 
work, she and the other ladies were doing in behalf of the sol- 
diers, had voted a contribution of twelve hundred dollars a month 
to the Ladies' Aid Society. Mrs. Bickerdyke was not, however, 
disposed to tender them the congratulations, to which perhaps 
they believed themselves entitled for their liberality. "You 
believe yourselves very generous, no doubt, gentlemen,'' she said, 
"aud think that because you have voted this pretty sum, you are 
doing all that is required of you. But I have in my hospital a 
hundred poor soldiers who have done more than any of you. 
Who of you would contribute a leg, an arm, or an eye, instead of 
what you liave done? How many hundred or thousand dollars 



MRS. MARY A. BTOKERDYKE. 181 

would you consider an equivalent for either? Don't deceive 
yourselves, gentlemen. The poor soldier who has given an arm, 
a leg, or an eye to his country (and many of them have given 
more than one) has given more than you have or can. How 
much more, then, he who has given his life? No! gentlemen, 
you must set your standard higher yet or you will not come up 
to the full measure of liberality in giving.'^ 

On her return to the South Mrs. Bickerdyke spent a few weeks 
at Hunts ville, Alabama, in charge of a hospital, and then joined 
Sherman's Fifteenth Corps in their rapid march toward Chattji- 
nooga. It will be remembered that Sherman's Corps, or rather 
the Arm} of the Tennessee which he now commanded were hur- 
ried into action immediately on their arrival at Chattanooga. 
To them was assigned the duty of making the attack against that 
portion of the enemy who were posted on the northern termina- 
tion of Mission Ridge, and the persistent assaults on Fort Buck- 
ner Avere attended with severe slaughter, though they made the 
victory elsewhere possible. The Field Hospital of the Fifteenth 
Army Corps was situated on the north bank of the Genesee 
River, on a slope at the base of Mission Ridge, where after the 
struggle was over seventeen hundred of our wounded and ex- 
hausted soldiers were brought. Mrs. Bickerdyke reached there 
before the din and smoke of battle were well over, and before all 
were brought from the field of blood and carnage. There she 
remained the only female attendant for four weeks. The sup- 
plies she had been able to bring with her soon gave out, but Dr. 
Newberry, the Western Secretary of the Sanitary Commission, 
presently arrived with an ample supply which she used freely. 

The Field Hospital was in a forest, about five miles from 
Chattanooga; wood was abundant, and the camp was warmed by 
immense burning log heaps, which were the only fire-places or 
cooking-stoves of the camp or hospitals. Men were detailed to 
fell the trees and pile the logs to heat the air, which was very 
wintry. Beside these fires Mrs. Bickerdyke made soup and 



182 woman's work IX the ciyil war. 

toast, tea and coffee, and broiled mutton without a gridiron, oftt-n 
blistering her fingers in the process. A house in due time was 
demolished to make bunks for the worst cases, and the bricks 
from the chimney were converted into an oven, where Mrs. Bick- 
erdyke made bread, yeast having been found in the Chicago 
boxes, and flour at a neighboring mill which had furnished flour 
to secessionists through the war until that time. Great multi- 
tudes were fed from these rude kitchens, and from time to time 
other conveniences were added and the labor made somewhat less 
exhausting. After four weeks of severe toil all the soldiers who 
were able to leave were furloughed home, and the remainder, 
about nine hundi-ed, brought to a more comfortable Field Hos- 
pital, two miles from Chattanooga. In this hospital Mrs. Bick- 
erdyke continued her work, being joined, New Year's eve, by 
Mrs. Eliza C. Porter, who thenceforward was her constant asso- 
ciate, both being employed by the North western Sanitary Com- 
mission to attend to this work of special field relief in that army. 
Mrs. Porter says that when she arrived there it was very cold, 
and the wind which had followed a heavy rain was very piercing, 
overturning some of the hospital tents and causing the inmates 
of all to tremble with cold and anxious fear. Mrs. Bickerdyke 
was going from tent to tent in the gale carrying hot bricks and 
hot drinks to warm and cheer the poor fellows. It was touching 
to see the strong attachment the soldiers felt for her. " She is a 
power of good," said one soldier. "We fared mighty poor till 
she came here,^' said another. " God bless the Sanitary Commis- 
sion," said a third, "for sending women among us." True to her 
attachment to the private soldiers, Mrs. Bickerdyke early sought 
an interview with General Grant, and told him in her plain way, 
that the surgeons in some of the hospitals were great rascals, and 
neglected the men shamefully ; and that unless they were removed 
and faithful men put in their places, he would lose hundi^eds and 
perhaps thousands of his veteran soldiers whom he could ill 
aftbrd to spare. "You must not," she said, "trust anybody's 



MRS. MARY A. BICKERDYKE. 183 

report in this matter^ but see to it yourself. Disguise yourself so 
that the surgeons or men won't know you, and go around to the 
hospitals and see for yourself how the men are neglected/^ 

"But, Mrs. Bickerdyke/' said the general, "that is the business 
of my medical director, he must attend to that. I can't see to 
everything in person." 

"Well," was her reply, "leave it to him if you think best; but 
if you do you will lose yom^ men." 

The general made no promises, but a night or two later the 
hospitals were visited by a stranger who made very particular 
inquiries, and within a week about half a dozen surgeons were 
dismissed and more efficient men put in their places. At tlie 
opening of spring, Mrs. Bicker dyke and Mrs. Porter returned to 
Huntsville and superintended the distribution of Sanitary Sup- 
plies in the hospitals there, and at Pulaski and other points. 

JSTo sooner was General Sherman prepared to move on his 
Atlanta Campaign than he sent word to Mrs. Bickerdyke to come 
up and accompany the army in its march. She accordingly left 
Huntsville on the 10th of May for Chattanooga, and from thence 
went immediately to Ringgold, near which town the army was 
then stationed. As the army moved forward to Dalton and 
E-esaca, she sent forward teams laden with supplies, and followed 
them in an ambulance the next day. On the 16th of May she 
and her associate Mrs. Porter proceeded at once to the Field 
Hospitals which were as near as safety would permit to the hard- 
fought battle-ground of the previous day, washed the wounded, 
dressed their wounds, and administered to them such nourish- 
ment as could be prepared. There was at first seme little 
delay in the receipt of sanitary stores, but with wonderful tact 
and ingenuity INlrs. Bickerdyke succeeded in making palatable 
dishes for the sick from the hard tack, coifee and other items of 
the soldier's ration. Soon however the sanitary goods came up, 
and thenceforward, with her rare executive ability the depart- 
ment of special relief for that portion of the army to which she 



184 WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR. 

was assigned was maintained in its highest condition of efficiency, 
in spite of disabilities which would have completely discouraged 
any woman of less resolution. The diary of her associate, Mrs. 
Porter, is full of allusions to the extraordinary exertions of Mrs. 
Bicker dyke during this campaign. We quote two or three as 
examples. 

"To-day every kettle which could be raised has been used in 
making coffee. Mrs. Bickerdyke has made barrel after barrel, 
and it is a comfort to know that multitudes are reached, and 
cheered, and saved. Two hundred and sixty slightly wounded 
men just came to this point on the cars on their way North, all 
hungry and weary, saying, ' We are so thirsty,^ ^ Do give us some- 
thing to eat.' Mrs. Bickerdyke was engaged in giving out 
supper to the three hundred in wards here, and told them she 
could not feed them then. They turned away in sorrow and were 
leaving, when learning who they were — wounded men of the 
Twentieth Army Corps, and their necessity — she told them to 
wait a few moments, she would attend to them. She gave them 
coffee, krout, and potato pickles, which are never eaten but by 
famished men, and for once they were a luxury. I stood in the 
room where our supplies were deposited, giving to some crackers, 
to some pickles, and to each hungry man something. One of 
the green cards that come on all the stores of the Northwestern 
Commission Mrs. Bickerdyke had tacked upon the wall, and this 
told the inquirers from what branch of the Commission the sup- 
plies were obtained. The men were mostly from New York, 
Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and most grateful recipients were 
they of the generosity of the Northwest. You can imagine the 
effort made to supply two barrels of coffee with only three camp- 
kettles, two iron boilers holding two pailfuls, one small iron tea- 
kettle and one sauce-pan, to make it in. These all placed over a 
dry rail-fire were boiled in double-quick time, and were filled 
and refilled till all had a portion. Chicago canned milk never 
gave more comfort than on this occasion, I assure you. Our 



MRS. MARY A. BICKERDYKE. 185 

cooking conveniences are much the same as at Mission Eidge, 
but there is to be a change soon. The Medical Director informs 
me that this is to be a recovering hospital, and cooking apparatus 
will soon be provided." 

"Mrs. Bickerdyke was greeted on the street by a soldier on 
horseback ; ^ Mother/ said he, ' is that you ? Don't you remem- 
ber me? I was in the hospital, my arm amputated, and I was 
saved by your kindness. I am so glad to see you,^ giving her a 
beautiful bouquet of roses, the only token of grateful remem- 
brance he could command. Mrs. Bickerdyke daily receives such 
greetings from men, who say they have been saved from death by 
her efforts.'^ 

"To-day three hundred and twelve men have been fed and 
comforted here. This morning Mrs. Bickerdyke made mush for 
two hundred, having gathered up in various places kettles, so 
that by great effort out of doors she can cook something. Potatoes, 
received from Iowa, and dried fruit and canned, have been dis- 
tributed among the men. Many of them are from Iowa. ^ What 
could we do without these stores f is the constant inquiry." 

"Almost every article of special diet has been cooked by Mrs. 
Bickerdyke personally, and all has been superintended by her." 

After the close of the Atlanta Campaign and the convalescence 
of the greater part of the wounded, Mrs. Bickerdyke returned to 
Chicago for a brief period of rest, but was soon called to Nash- 
ville and Franklin to attend the wounded of General Thomas's 
xVrmy after the campaign which ended in Hood's utter discomfi- 
ture. When Savannah was surrendered she hastened thither, and 
after organizing the supply department of its hospitals, she and 
Mrs. Porter, who still accompanied her, established their system 
of Field Relief in Sherman's Campaign through the Carolinas. 
When at last in June, 1865, Sherman's veterans reached the Na- 
tional Capitol and were to be mustered out, the Sanitary Com- 
mission commenced its work of furnishing the supplies of clothing 
and other needful articles to these grim soldiers, to make their 

24 



186 

homeward journey more comfortable and their appearance to their 
families more agreeable. The work of distribution in the Fif- 
teenth and Seventeenth Army Corps was assigned to Mrs. Bick- 
erdyke and Mrs. Porter^ and was performed, says Mrs. Barker, 
who had the general superintendence of the distribution, admira- 
bly. With this labor Mrs. Bickerdyke's connection with the 
sanitary work of the army ceased. She had, however, been too 
lojig engaged in philanthropic labor, to be content to sit down 
quietly, and lead a life of inaction ; and ■ after a brief period of 
rest, she began to gather the more helpless of the freedmen, in 
Chicago, and has since devoted her time and efforts to a " Freed- 
men's Home and Refuge" in that city, in which she is accom- 
plishing great good. Out of the host of zealous workers in the 
hospitals and in the field, none have borne to their homes in 
greater measure the hearty and earnest love of the soldiers, as 
none had been more zealously and persistently devoted to their 
interests. 




^.,/rAj:<(-iAp]::T F BRr,in^'.NRir)G;hl 



MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE 




TRUE heroine of the war was Margaret Elizabeth 
Breckinridge. Patient, courageous, self - forgetting, 
steady of purpose and cheerful in spirit, she belonged 
by nature to the heroic order, while all the circum- 
stances of her early life tended to mature and prepare her for her 
destined work. Had her lot been cast in the dark days of reli- 
gious intolerance and persecution, her steadfast enthusiasm and 
holy zeal would have earned for her a martyr's cross and crown ; 
but, born in this glorious nineteenth century, and reared in an 
atmosphere of liberal thought and active humanity, the first spark 
of patriotism that flashed across the startled North at the out- 
break of the rebellion, set all her soul aglow, and made it hence- 
forth an altar of living sacrifice, a burning and a shining light, 
to the end of her days. Dearer to her gentle spirit than any 
martyr's crown, must have been the consciousness that this God- 
given light had proved a guiding beacon to many a faltering soul 
feeling its way into the dim beyond, out of the drear loneliness 
of camp or hospital. With her slight form, her bright face, and 
her musical voice, she seemed a ministering angel to the sick and 
suffering soldiers, while her sweet womanly purity and her tender 
devotion to their wants made her almost an object of worship 
among them. " Ain't she an angel ?" said a gray-headed soldier 
as he watched her one morning as she was busy getting breakfast 
for the boys on the steamer '^City of Alton." ^'She never seems 
to tire, she is always smiling, and don't seem to walk — she flies, 

187 



188 



all but — God bless her !" Another , a soldier boy of seventeen 
said to her, as she was smoothing his hair and saying cheering 
words about mother and home to him, ^^ Ma'am, where do you 
come from ? How could such a lady as you are come down here, 
to take care of us poor, sick, dirty boys ?" She answered — '^ I 
consider it an honor to wait on you, and wash off the mud you've 
waded through for me." 

Another asked this favor of her, ^^ Lady, please write down your 
name, and let me look at it, and take it home, to show my wife 
who wrote my letters, and combed my hair and fed me. I don't 
believe you're like other people." In one of her letters she says, 
^' I am often touched with their anxiety not to give trouble, not 
to bother^ as they say. That same evening I found a poor, 
exhausted fellow, lying on a stretcher, on which he had just been 
brought in. There was no bed for him just then, and he was to 
remain there for the present, and looked uncomfortable enough, 
with his knapsack for a pillow. ' I know some hot tea will do 
you good,' I said. ^Yes, ma'am,' he answered, ^ but I am too 
weak to sit up with nothing to lean against ; it's no matter, — 
don't bother about me,' but his eyes were fixed longingly on the 
smoking tea. Everybody was busy, not even a nurse in sight, 
but the poor man must have his tea. I pushed away the knap- 
sack, raised his head, and seated myself on the end of the stretcher; 
and, as I drew his poor tired head back upon my shoulder and 
half held him, he seemed, with all his pleasure and eager enjoy- 
ment of the tea, to be troubled at my being so bothered with him. 
He forgot I had come so many hundred miles on purpose to be 
bothered." 

One can hardly read this simple unaffected statement of hers, 
without instinctively recalling the touching story told of a soldier 
in one of the hospitals of the Crimea who, when Florence Night- 
ingale had passed, turned and kissed the place upon his pillow 
where her shadow fell. The sweet name of the fair English 
nurse might well be claimed by many of our American heroines, 



MARGAIIET ELIZABETH BRECKINRIDGE. 189 

but, when we think of Margaret's pure voice, singing hymns with 
the soldiers on the hospital-boat, filling the desolate woods along 
the Mississippi shores with solemn music in the still night, we 
feel that it belongs especially to her and that we may call her, 
without offense to the others, our Florence Nightingale. 

Her great power of adaptation served her well in her chosen 
vocation. Unmindful of herself, and always considerate of others, 
she could suit herself to the need of the moment and was equally 
at home in making tea and toast for the hungry, dressing ghastly 
wounds for the sufferers, and in singing hymns and talking of 
spiritual things with the sick and dying. 

She found indeed her true vocation. She saw her way and 
walked fearlessly in it; she knew her work and did it witli all 
her heart and soul. When she first began to visit the hospitals 
m and around St. Louis, she wrote ^^I shall never be satisfied 
till I get right into a hospital, to live till the war is over. If you 
are constantly with the men, you have hundreds of opportunities 
and moments of influence in which you can gain their attention 
and their hearts, and do more good than in any missionary field.'' 
Once, on board a steamer near Vicksburg, during the fearful 
winter siege of that city, some one said to her, " You must hold 
back, you are going beyond your strength, you will die if you 
are not more prudent!" "Well," said she, with thrilling ear- 
nestness, "what if I do? Shall men come here by tens of thou- 
sands and fight, and suffer, and die, and shall not some women 
be willing to die to sustain and succor them?" No wonder that 
such sincerity won all hearts and carried all before it ! Alas ! the 
brave spirit was stronger than the frail casket that encased it, 
and that yielded inevitably to the heavy demands that were made 
upon it. 

A rare and consistent life was hers, a worthy and heroic death. 
Let us stop a moment to admire the truth and beauty of the one, 
and to do reverence to the deep devotion of the other. The fol- 
lowing sketch is gathered from the pages of a " Memorial " pub- 



190 

lished by her friends shortly after her death, which occurred at 
Niagara Falls, July 27th, 1864. 
/ "Mai'garet Elizabeth Breckinridge was born in Philadelphia, 
■ March 24th, 1832. Her paternal grandfather was John Breck- 
inridge, of Kentucky, once Attorney-General of the United 
States. Her father, the Rev. John Breckinridge, D. D., was his 
second son, a man of talent and influence, from whom Margaret 
inherited good gifts of mind and heart, and an honored name. 
Her mother, who was the daughter of Rev. Samuel Miller, of 
Princeton, N. J., died when Margaret was only six years old, at 
which time she and her sister Mary went to live with their 
grandparents at Princeton. Their father dying three years after- 
wards, the home of the grandparents became their permanent 
abode. They had one brother, now Judge Breckinridge of. St. 
Louis. Margaret's school-days were pleasantly passed, for she 
had a genuine love of study, an active intellect, and a very reten- 
tive memory. When her school education was over, she still 
continued her studies, and never gave up her prescribed course 
until the great work came upon her which absorbed all her time 
and powers. In the year 1852 her sister married Mr. Peter A. 
Porter of Niagara Falls, a gentleman of culture and accomplish- 
ments, a noble man, a true patriot. At his house the resort of 
literary and scientific men, the shelter of the poor and friendless, 
the centre of sweet social life and domestic peace, Margaret found 
for a time a happy home. 

^'Between her and her sister, Mrs. Porter, there was genuine 
sisterly love, a fine intellectual sympathy, and a deep and tender 
affection. The first great trial of Miss Breckinridge's life was 
the death of this beloved sister which occurred in 1854, only tAVO 
years after her marriage. She died of cholera, after an illness 
of only a few hours. Margaret had left her but a few days be- 
fore, in perfect health. The shock was so terrible that for many 
years she could not speak her sister's name without deep emotion ; 
but she was too brave and too truly religious to allow this blow, 



MARGARET ELIZABETH BRECKINRIDGE. 191 

dreadful as it was^ to impair her usefulness or unfit her for her 
destined work. Her religion was eminently practical and ener- 
getic. She was a constant and faithful Sunday-school teacher, 
and devoted her attention especially to the colored people in whom 
she had a deep interest. She had become by inheritance the 
owner of several slaves in Kentucky, who were a source of great 
anxiety to her, and the will of her father, though carefully de- 
signed to secure their freedom, had become so entangled with 
state laws, subsequently made, as to prevent her, during her life, 
from carrying out what was his wish as well as her own. By 
her will she directed that they should be freed as soon as possible, 
and something given them to provide against the first uncertain- 
ties of self-support. 

So the beginning of the war found Margaret ripe and ready 
for her noble womanly work ; trained to self-reliance, accustomed 
to using her powers in the service of others, tender, brave, and 
enthusiastic, chastened by a life-long sorrow, she longed to devote 
herself to her country, and to do all in her power to help on its 
noble defenders. During the first year of the struggle duty con- 
strained her to remain at home, but heart and hands worked 
bravely all the time, and even her ready pen was pressed into the 
service. 

But Margaret could not be satisfied to remain with the Home- 
Guards. She must be close to the scene of action and in the 
foremost ranks. She determined to become a hospital-nurse. 
Her anxious friends combated her resolution in vain ; they felt 
that her slender frame and excitable temperament could not bear 
the stress and strain of hospital work, but she had set her mark 
and must press onward let life or death be the issue. In April, 
1862, Miss Breckinridge set out for the West, stopping a fcAV 
weeks at Baltimore on her way. Then she commenced her hos- 
pital service; then, too, she contracted measles, and, by the time 
she reached Lexington, Kentucky, her destination, she was quite 
ill ; but the delay was only temporary, and soon she was again 



192 

absorbed in her Avork. A guerrilla raid, under John Morgan, 
brought her face to face with the realities of war, and soon after, 
early in September she found herself in a beleaguered city, actu- 
ally in the grasp of the Rebels, Kirby Smith holding possession 
of Lexington and its neighborhood for about six weeks. It is 
quite evident that Miss Breckinridge improved this occasion to 
air her loyal sentiments and give such help and courage to Union- 
ists as lay in her power. In a letter written just after this inva- 
sion she says, "At that very time, a train of ambulances, bringing 
our sick and wounded from Richmond, was leaving town on its 
way to Cincinnati. It was a sight to stir every loyal heart ; and 
so the Union people thronged round them to cheer them up with 
pleasant, hopeful words, to bid them God speed, and last, but not 
least, to fill their haversacks and canteens. We went, thinking 
it possible we might be ordered ofiP by the guard, but they only 
stood ofP, scowling and wondering. 

" ^ Good-by,' said the poor fell )ws from the ambulances, ^ we're 
coming back as soon as ever we get well.' 

"'Yes, yes,' we whispered, for there were spies all around us, 
' and every one of you bring a regiment with you.' " 

As soon as these alarms Avere over, and Kentucky freed from 
rebel invaders. Miss Breckinridge went on to St. Louis, to spend 
the winter with her brother. As soon as she arrived, she began 
to visit the hospitals of the city and its neighborhood, but her 
chief work, and that from the effects of which she never recovered, 
was the service she undertook upon the hospital boats, which were 
sent down the Mississippi to bring up the sick and wounded from 
the posts below. She made two excursions of this kind, full of 
intense experiences, both of pleasure and pain. These boats went 
down the river empty unless they chanced to carry companies of 
soldiers to rejoin their regiments, but they returned crowded with 
the sick and dying, emaciated, fever-stricken men, sadly in need 
of tender nursing but with scarcely a single comfort at command. 
Several of the nurses broke down under this arduous and difficult 



MARGARET ELIZABETH BRECKINRIDGE. 193 

service, but Margaret congratulated herself that she had held out 
to the end. These expeditions were not without danger as well 
as privation. One of her letters records a narrow escape. "To 
give you an idea of the audacity of these guerrillas; while we 
lay at Memphis that afternoon, in broad daylight, a party of six, 
dressed in our uniform, went on board a government boat, lying- 
just across the river, and asked to be taken as passengers six 
miles up the river, Avhich was granted ; but they had no sooner 
left the shore than they drew their pistols, overpowered the crew, 
and made them go up eighteen miles to meet another government 
boat coming down loaded with stores, tied the boats together and 
burned them, setting the crew of each adrift in their own yawl, . 
and nobody knew it till they reached Memphis, two hours later. 
Being able to hear nothing of the wounded, we pushed on to 
Helena, ninety miles below, and here dangers thickened. We 
saw the guerrillas burning cotton, with our own eyes, along the 
shore, we saw their little skiffs hid away among the bushes on 
the shore; and just before we got to Helena, had a most narrow 
escape from their clutches. A signal to land on the river was in 
ordinary times never disregarded, as the way business of freight 
and passengers was the chief profit often of the trip, and it seems 
hard for pilots and captains always to be on their guard against a 
decoy. At this landing the signal was given, all as it should be, 
and we were just rounding to, when, with a sudden jerk, the 
boat swung round into the stream again. The mistake was dis- 
covered in time, by a government officer on board, and we escaped 
an ambush. Just think ! we might have been prisoners in Mis- 
sissippi now, but God meant better things for us than that.'^ 

Her tender heart was moved by the sufferings of the wretched 
colored people at Helena. She says, " But oh ! the contrabands ! 
my heart did ache for them. Such wretched, uncared-for, sad- 
looking creatures I never saw. They come in such swarms that 
it is impossible to do anything for them, unless benevolent people 
take the thing into their hands. They have a little settlement in 

23 



194 

one end of the town^ Und the government furnishes them rations, 

but they cannot all get work, even if they were all able and 

willing to do it ; then they get sick from exposure, and now the 

small pox is making terrible havoc among them. They have a 

hospital of their own, and one of our Union Aid ladies has gone 

down to superintend it, and get it into some order, but it seems as 

if there was nothing before them but suffering for many a long 

; day to come, and that sad,* sad truth came back to me so often as 

11 I went about among them, that no people ever gained their free- 

I I dom without a baptism of fire/^' 

Miss Breckinridge returned to St. Louis on a small hospital- 
boat on which there were one hundred and sixty patients in care 
of herself and one other lady. A few extracts from one of her 
letters will show what brave work it gave her to do. 

"It was on Sunday morning, 25th of January, that Mrs. C. 
and I went on board the hospital boat which had received its sad 
freight the day before, and was to leave at once for St. Louis, 
and it would be impossible to describe the scene which presented 
itself to me as I stood in the door of the cabin. Lying on the 
floor, with nothing under them but a tarpaulin and their blankets, 
were crowded fifty men, many of them with death written on 
their faces ; and looking through the half-open doors of the state- 
rooms, we saw that they contained as many more. Young, boy- 
ish faces, old and thin from suffering, great restless eyes that were 
fixed on nothing, incoherent ravings of those who were wild with 
fever, and hollow coughs on every side — this, and much more 
that I do not want to recall, was our welcome to our new work; 
but, as we passed between the two long rows, back to our own 
cabin, pleasant smiles came to the lips of some, others looked 
I after us wonderingly, and one poor boy whispered, ^Oh, but it 
I is good to see the ladies come in !' I took one long look into 
f Mrs. C.'s eyes to see how much strength and cou^^age was hidden 
1 in them. We asked each other, not in words, but in those fine 
\ electric thrills by which one soul questions another, ^ Can Ave 



MARGARET ELIZABETH BRECKIIs^RIDGE. 195 

bring strength, and hope, and comfort to these poor suffering 
men?' and the answer was, ^Yes, by God's help we will!' The 
first thing was to give them something like a comfortable bed, 
and, Sunday though it was, we went to work to run up our 
sheets into bed-sacks. Every man that had strength enough to 
stagger was pressed into the service, and by night most of them 
had something softer than a tarpaulin to sleep on. ^Oh, I am 
so comfortable now!' some of them said; ^I think I can sleep 
to-night,' exclaimed one little fellow, half-laughing with plea- 
sure. The next thing was to provide something that sick people 
could eat, for coffee and bread was poor food for most of them. 
We had two little stoves, one in the cabin and one in the cham- 
bermaid's room, and here, the whole time we were on board, we 
had to do the cooking for a hundred men. Twenty times that 
day I fully made up my mind to cry with vexation, and twenty 
times that day I laughed instead; and surely, a kettle of tea was 
never made under so many difficulties as the one I made that 
morning. The kettle lid was not to be found, the water simmered 
and sang at its leisure, and when I asked for the poker I could 
get nothing but an old bayonet, and, all the time, through the 
half-open door behind me, I heard the poor hungry fellows ask- 
ing the nurses, ^ Where is that tea the lady promised me?' or 
^ When will my toast come?' But there must be an end to all 
things, and when I carried them their tea and toast, and heard 
them j^ronounce it ^plaguey good,' and ^ awful nice,' it was more 
than a recompense for all the worry. 

'^ One great trouble was the intense cold. We could not keep 
life in some of the poor emaciated frames. ^Oh dear! I shall 
freeze to death !' one poor little fellow groaned, as I passed him. 
Blankets seemed to have no effect upon them, and at last we had 
to keep canteens filled with boiling water at their feet. ***** 

" There was one poor boy about whom from the first I had 
been very anxious. He drooped and faded from day to day 
before my eyes. Nothing but constant stimulants seemed to keep 



196 



him alive, and, at last I summoned courage to tell him — oh, how 
hard it was! — that he could not live many hours. ^Are you 
willing to die?^ I asked him. He closed his eyes, and w^as silent 
a moment; then came that passionate exclamation which I have 
heard so often, ^ My mother, oh ! my mother !' and, to the last, 
though I believe God gave him strength to trust in Christ, and 
willingness to die, he longed for his mother. I had to leave 
him, and, not long after, he sent for me to come, that he was 
dying, and wanted me to sing to him. He prayed for himself in 
the most touching words -, he confessed that he had been a wicked 
boy, and then with one last message for that dear mother, turned 
his face to the pillow and died; and so, one by one, we saw them 
pass away, and all the little keepsakes and treasures they had 
loved and kept about them, laid away to be sent home to those 
they should never see again. Oh, it was heart-breaking to 
see that!'' 

After the "sad freight" had reached its destination, and the 
care and responsibility are over, true woman that she is, she 
breaks down and cries over it all, but brightens up, and looking 
back upon it declares: "I certainly never had so much comfort 
and satisfaction in anything in all my life, and the tearful thanks 
of those who thought in their gratitude that they owed a great 
deal more to us than they did, the blessings breathed from dying 
lips, and the comfort it has been to friends at home to hear all 
about the last sad hours of those they love, and know their dying 
messages of love to them; all this is a rich, and full, and over- 
flowing reward for any labor and for any sacrifice." Again she 
says : " There is a soldier's song of which they are very fond, one 
verse of which often comes back to me: 

' So I've had a sight of drilling, 
And I've roughed it many days ; 
Yes, and death has nearly had me, 
Yet, I think, the service pays.' 

Indeed it does, — richly, abundantly, blessedly, and I thank God 



MARGARET ELIZABETH BRECKINRIDGE. 197 

that he has honored me by letting me do a little and suffer a little 
for this grand old Union^ and the dear, brave fellows who are 
fighting for it." 

Early in March she returned to St. Louis, expecting to make 
another trip dow^n the river, but her work was nearly over, and 
the seeds of disease sown in her winter's campaign were already 
overmastering her delicate constitution. She determined to go 
eastward for rest and recovery, intending to return in the 
autumn and fix herself in one of the Western hospitals, where 
she could devote herself to her beloved work while the war lasted. 
At this time she writes to her Eastern friends : '^ I shall soon turn 
my face eastward, and I have more and more to do as my time 
here grows shorter. I have been at the hospital every day this 
week, and at the Government rooms, where we prepare the 
Government work for the poor Avomen, four hundred of whom 
we supply with work every week. I have also a family of refu- 
gees to look after, so I do not lack employment." 

Early in June, Miss Breckinridge reached Niagara on her way 
to the East, where she remained for a month. Eor a year she 
struggled against disease and weakness, longing all the time to be 
at work again, making vain plans for the time when she should 
be "well and strong, and able to go back to the hospitals." With 
this cherished scheme in view she went in the early part of May, 
1864, into the Episcopal Hospital in Philadelphia, that she might 
acquire experience in nursing, especially in surgical cases, so that 
in the autumn, she could begin her labor of love among the 
soldiers more efficiently and confidently than before. She went 
to work with her usual energy and promptness, following the 
surgical nurse every day through the wards, learning the best 
methods of bandaging and treating the various wounds. She 
was not satisfied with merely seeing this done, but often washed 
and dressed the wounds with her own hands, saying, " I shall be 
able to do this for the soldiers when I get back to the army." 
The patients could not understand this, and would often expostu- 



198 

lale, sayings ^^Oli no, Miss, that is not for tlie like of you to do!" 
but she would playfully insist and have her way. Nor was she 
satisfied to srain so much without 2:ivino; somethino; in return. 
She went from bed to bed, encouraging the despondent, cheering 
the weak and miserable, reading to them from her little Testa- 
ment, and singing sweet hymns at twilight, — a ministering angel 
here as well as on the hospital-boats on the Mississippi. 

On the 2d of June she had an attack of erysipelas, which how- 
ever w^as not considered alarming, and under which she was 
patient and cheerful. 

Then came news of the fighting before Richmond and of the 
probability that her brother-in-law, Colonel Porter,* had fallen. 



■^ This truly Christian hero, the son of General Peter A. Porter of Niagara 
Falls, was one of those rare spirits, who surrounded by everything which could 
make life blissful, were led by the promptings of a lofty and self-sacrificing 
patriotism to devote their lives to their country. He was killed in the severe 
battle of June 3, 1864. His first wife who had deceased some years before was 
a sister of Margaret Breckinridge, and the second who survived him was her 
cousin. One of the delegates of the Christian Commission writes concerning 
him : — " Colonel Peter B. Porter, of Niagara Falls, commanding the 8th New 
York heavy artillery, was killed within five or six rods of the rebel lines. 
Seven wounds were found upon his body. One in his neck, one between his 
shoulders, one on the right side, and lower part of the stomach, one on the left, 
and near his heart, and two in his legs. The evening before he said, 'that if 
the charge was made he would not come out alive ; but that if required, he 
would go into it.' The last words heard from him were : ' Boys, folloio me.' We 
notice the following extract from his will, which was made before entering the 
service, which shows the man : 

"Feeling to its full extent the probability that I may not return from the path 
of duty on which I have entered — if it please God that it be so — I can say with 
truth I have entered on the career of danger with no ambitious aspirations, nor 
with the idea that I am fitted by nature or experience to be of any important 
service to the Government ; but in obedience to the call of duty demanding 
every citizen to contribute what he could in means, labor, or life to sustain the 
government of his country ; a sacrifice made, too, the more willingly by me 
when I consider how singularly benefited I have been by the institutions of this 
land, and that up to this time all the blessings of life have been showered upon 
me beyond what falls usually to the lot of man." 



MAEGAEET ELIZABETH BRECKINRIDGE. 199 

Her friends concealed it from her until the probability became a 
sad certainty, and then they were obliged to reveal it to her. 
The blow fell upon her with overwhelming force. One wild cry 
of agony, one hour of unmitigated sorrow, and then she sweetly 
and submissively bowed herself to the will of her Heavenly 
Father, and was still ; but the shock was too great for the wearied 
body and the bereaved heart. Gathering up her small remnant 
of strength and courage she went to Baltimore to join the afflicted 
family of Colonel Porter, saying characteristically, ^^ I can do 
more good with them than anywhere else just now.'' After a 
week's rest in Baltimore she proceeded with them to Niagara, 
bearing the journey apparently well, but the night after her arrival 
she became alarmingly ill, and it was soon evident that she could 
not recover from her extreme exhaustion and prostration. For 
five weeks her life hung trembling in the balance, and then the 
silver cord was loosed and she went to join her dear ones gone 
before. 

^'Underneath are the everlasting arms," she said to a friend 
who bent anxiously over her during her sickness. Yes, "the 
everlasting arms" upheld her in all her courageous heroic earthly 
work; they cradle her spirit now in eternal rest. 



MRS. STEPHEN BARKER 




RS. BARKER is a lady of great refinement and high 

culture, the sister of the Hon. William Whiting, late 

Attorney-General of Massachusetts, and the wife of the 

Rev. Stephen Barker, during the war. Chaplain of the 

First Massachusetts Heavy Artillery. 

This regiment was organized in July, 1861, as the Fourteenth 
Massachusetts Infantry (but afterwards changed as above) under 
the command of Colonel William B. Green, of Boston, and was 
immediately ordered to Fort Albany, which was then an outpost 
of defense guarding the Long Bridge over the Potomac, near 
Washington. 

Having resolved to share the fortunes of this regiment in the 
service of its hospitals, Mrs. Barker followed it to Washington 
in August, and remained in that city six months before suitable 
quarters were arranged for her at the fort. 

During her stay in Washington, she spent much of her time in 
visiting hospitals, and in ministering to their suifering inmates. 
Especially was this the case with the E. Street Infirmary, which 
was destroyed by fire in the autumn of that year. After the fire 
the inmates were distributed to other hospitals, except a few 
whose wounds would not admit of a removal. These were col- 
lected together in a small brick school-house, which stands on the 
corner of the lot now occupied by the Judiciary Square Hospital, 
and there was had the first Thai ksgiving Dinner which was 
given in an army hospital. 

200 



MRS. STEPHEN BARKER. 201 

After dinner^ which was made as nice and home-like as possible, 
fchey played games of checkers, chess, and backgammon on some 
new boards presented from the supplies of the Sanitary Commis- 
sion, and Mrs. Barker read aloud ^'The Cricket on the Hearth." 
This occupied all the afternoon and made the day seem so short 
to these poor convalescents that thev all confessed afterwards that 
they had no idea, nor expectation that they could so enjoy a day 
which they had hoped to spend at home ; and they always remem- 
bered and spoke of it with pleasure. 

This was a new and entirely exceptional experience to Mrs. 
Barker. Like all the ladies who have gone out as volunteer 
nurses or helps in the hospitals, she had her whole duty to learn. 
In this she was aided by a sound judgment, and an evident 
natural capacity and executive ability. Without rules or instruc- 
tions in hospital visiting, she had to learn by experience the best 
methods of aiding sick soldiers without coming into conflict with 
the regulations peculiar to military hospitals. Of course, no 
useful work could be accomplished without the sanction and con- 
fidence of the surgeons, and these could only be won by strict and 
honorable obedience to orders. 

The first duty was to learn what Government supplies could 
properly be expected in the hospitals ; next to be sure that where 
w^anting they were not withheld by the ignorance or carelessness 
of the sub-officials ; and lastly that the soldier was sincere and 
reliable in the statement of his wants. By degrees these ques- 
tions received their natural solution; and the large discretionary 
power granted by the surgeons, and the generous confidence and 
aid extended by the Sanitary Commission, in furnishing whatever 
supplies she asked for, soon gave Mrs. Barker all the facilities 
she desired for her useful and engrossing work. 

In March, 1862, Mrs. Barker removed to Fort Albany, and 
systematically commenced the work which had first induced her 
to leave her home. This work was substantially the same that she 
had done in Washington, but was confined to the Regimental 

26 



202 woman's ayoek in the civil war. 

Hospitals. But it was for many reasons pleasanter and more in- 
teresting. As the wife of the Chaplain of the Regiment, the men 
all recognized the fitness of her position, and she shared with him 
all the duties, not strictly clerical, of his of&ce, finding great hap- 
piness in their mutual usefulness and sustaining power. She 
also saw the same men oftener, and became better acquainted, and 
more deeply interested in their individual conditions, and she had 
here facilities at her command for the j)reparation of all the little 
luxuries and delicacies demanded by special cases. 

While the regiment held Fort Albany, and others of the forts 
forming the defenses of Washington, the officers' quarters were 
ahvays such as to furnish a comfortable home, and Mrs. Barker 
had, consequently, none of the exposures and hardships of those 
who followed the army and labored in the field. As she, herself, 
has written in a private letter — "It was no sacrifice to go to the 
army, because my husband was in it, and it would have been 
much harder to stay at home than to go with him.* * * J can- 
not even claim the merit of acting from a sense of duty — for I 
wanted to work for the soldiers, and should have been desperately 
disappointed had I been prevented from doing it." 

And so, with a high heart, and an unselfish spirit, which dis- 
claimed all merit in sacrifice, and even the existence of the sacri- 
fice, she entered upon and fulfilled to the end the arduous and 
painful duties which devolved upon her. 

For nearly two years she continued in unremitting attendance 
upon the regimental hospitals, except when briefly called home to 
the sick and dying bed of her father. 

All this time her dependence for hospital comforts was upon 
the Sanitary Commission, for though the regiment was performing 
the duties of a garrison it was not so considered by the War 
Department, and the hos])ital received none of the furnishings it 
would have been entitled to as a Post Hospital. Most of the 
hospital bedding and clothing, as well as delicacies of diet came 
from the Sanitary Commission, and a little money contributed 



MRS. STEPHEN BARKER. - 203 

from private sources helped to procure the needed furniture. 
Mrs. Barker found this "camp life" absorbing and interesting. 
She became identified with the regiment and was accustomed to 
speak of it as a part of herself. And even more closely and inti- 
mately did she identify herself with her suffering patients in the 
hospital. 

On Sundays, while the chaplain was about his regular duties, 
she was accustomed to have a little service of her own for the 
patients, which mostly consisted in reading aloud a printed ser- 
mon of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, which appeared in the 
Weekly Traveller, and which ^vas always listened to with eager 
interest. 

The chaplain's quarters were close by the hospital, and at any 
hour of the day and till a late hour of the night Mr. and Mrs. 
Barker could assure themselves of the condition and wants of any 
of the patients, and be instantly ready to minister to them. Mrs. 
Barker, especially, bore them continually in her thoughts, and 
though not with them, her heart and time w^ere given to the 
work of consolation, either by adding to the comforts of the body 
or the mind. 

In January, 1864, it became evident to JMrs. Barker that she 
could serve in the hospitals more effectually by living in Wash- 
ington, than by remaining at Fort Albany. She therefore offered 
her services to the Sanitary Commission without other compen- 
sation than the expenses of her board, and making no stipulation 
as to the nature of her duties, but only that she might remain 
within reach of the regimental hospital, to which she had so long 
been devoted. 

Just at this time the Commission had determined to secure a 
more sure and thorough personal distribution of the articles in- 
tended for soldiers, and she was requested to become a visitor in 
certain hospitals in Washington. It was desirable to visit bed- 
sides, as before, but henceforth as a representative of the Sanitary 
Commission, with a wider range of duties, and a proportionate 



204 wo:\rAx's work tx tpie civil war. 

increase of facilities. Soldiers were complaining that they saw 
nothino; of the Sanitary Commission, when the shirts thev wore, 
the fruits they ate, the stationery they used, and numerous other 
comforts from the Commission abounded in the hospitals. Mrs. 
Barker found that she had only to refuse the thanks which she 
constantly received, and refer them to the proper object, to see a 
marked chang-e in the feelino; of the sick toward the Sanitarv 
Commission. And she was so fully convinced of the beneficial 
results of this remarkable organization, that she found the greatest 
pleasure in doing this. 

In all other respects her work was unchanged. There was the 
same need of cheering influences — the writing of letters and pro- 
curing of books, and obtaining of information. There were the 
thousand varied calls for sympathy and care which kept one con- 
stantly on the keenest strain of active life, so that she came to feel 
that no gift, grace, or accomplishment could be spared without 
leaving something wanting of a perfect woman's work in the hos- 
pitals. 

Nine hospitals, in addition to the regimental hospital, which 
she still thought of as her "own," were assigned her. Of these 
Harewood contained nearly as many patients as all the others. 
During the summer of 1864, its wards and tents held twenty- 
eight hundred patients. It was INIrs. Barker's custom to com- 
mence here every Monday morning at the First Ward, doing all 
she saw needful as she went along, and to go on as far as she 
could before two o'clock, when she went to dinner. In the after- 
noon she would visit one of the smaller hospitals, all of whose 
inmates she could see in the course of one visit, and devote the 
whole afternoon entirely to that hospital. 

The next morning she would begin again at Harewood, 
where she stopped the day before, doing all she could there, pre- 
vious to two o'clock, and devoting the afternoon to a smaller hos- 
pital. When Harewood was finished, two hospitals might be 



MRS. STEPHEN BARKER. 205 

visited in a clay^ and in this manner she would complete the entire 
round weekly. 

It was not necessary to speak to every man^ for on being recog- 
nized as a Sanitary Visitor the men would tell her their wants, 
and her eye was 'sufficiently practiced to discern where undue 
shyness prevented any from speaking of them. An assistant 
always went with her, who drove the horses, and who, by his 
knowledge of German, was a great help in understanding the 
foreign soldiers. They carried a variety of common articles with 
them, so that the larger proportion of the wants could be supplied 
on the spot. In this way a constant distribution was going on, 
in all the hospitals of Washington, Avhereby the soldiers received 
w^hat was sent for them with certainty and promptness. 

In the meantime the First Heavy Artillery had been ordered 
to join the army before Petersburg. On the fourth day after it 
left the forts round Washington, it lost two hundred men killed, 
wounded and taken prisoners. As soon as the sick or wounded 
men began to be sent back to Washington, Mrs. Barker was noti- 
fied of it by her husband, and sought them out to make them the 
objects of her special care. 

At the same time the soldiers of this regiment, in the field, 
were constantly confiding money and mementoes to Mr. Barker, 
to be sent to Mrs. Barker by returning Sanitary Agents, and for- 
warded by her to their families in New England. Often she gave 
up the entire day to the preparation of these little packages for 
the express, and to the writing of letters to each person who was 
to receive a package, containing messages, and a request for a 
reply when the money was received. Large as this business was, 
she never entrusted it to any hands but her own, and though she 
sent over two thousand dollars in small sums, and numerous 
mementoes, she never lost an article of all that were transmitted 
by express. 

But whatever she had on hand, it was, at this time, an especial 
duty to attend to any person who desired a more thorough under- 



206 

standing of the work of hospitals; and many days were thus 
spent with strangers who had no other means of access to the 
information they desired, except through one whose tune could 
be given to such purposes. 

These somewhat minute details of Mrs. Barker's labors are 
given as being peculiar to the department of service in which she 
worked, and to which she so conscientiously devoted herself for 
such a length of time. 

In this way she toiled on until December, 1864, when a request 
was made by the Women's Central Association that a hospital 
visitor might be sent to the Soldiers' Aid Societies in the State 
of New York. Few of these had ever seen a person actually 
engaged in hospital work, and it was thought advisable to assure 
them that their labors were not only needed, but that their results 
really reached and benefited the sick soldiers. 

Mrs. Barker was chosen as this representative, and the pro- 
gramme included the services of Mr. Barker, whose regiment Avas 
now mustered out of service, as a lecturer before general audi- 
ences, while Mrs. Barker met the Aid Societies in the same 
places. During the month of December, 1864, Mr. and Mrs. 
Barker, in pursuance of this plan, visited Harlem, Brooklyn, 
Astoria, Hastings, Irvington, Rhinebeck, Albany, Troy, Rome, 
Syracuse, Auburn, and Buffalo, presenting the needs of the sol- 
dier, and the benefits of the work of the Sanitary Commission to 
the people generally, and to the societies in particular, with great 
acceptance, and to the ultimate benefit of the cause. This tour 
accomplished, Mrs. Barker returned to her hospital work in 
Washington. 

After the surrender of Lee's army, Mrs. Barker visited Rich- 
mond and Petersburg, and as she walked the deserted streets of 
those fallen cities, she felt that her work was nearly done. 
Almost four years, in storm and in sunshine, in heat and in cold, 
in hope and in discouragement she had ceaselessly toiled on, and 



MRS. STEPHEN BARKER. 207 

all along her path were strewed the blessings of thousands of 
grateful hearts. 

The increasing heats of summer Avarned her that she could not 
withstand the influences of another season of hard work in a warm 
climate, and on the day of the assassination of President Lincoln, 
she left Washington for Boston. 

Mrs. Barker had been at home about six weeks when a new 
call for effort came, on the return of the Army of the Potomac 
encamped around Washington previous to its final march for 
home. To it was presently added the Veterans of Sherman's 
grand march, and all were in a state of destitution. The follow- 
ing extract from the Report of the Field Relief Service of the United 
States Sanitary Commission ivith the Armies of the Potomac, Georgia, 
and Tennessee, in the Department of Washington, May and June, 
1865, gives a much better idea of the work required than could 
otherwise be presented. 

^'Armies, the aggregate strength of which must have exceeded 
two hundred thousand men, were rapidly assembling around this 
city, previous to the grand review and their disbandment. These 
men were the travel-worn veterans of Sherman, and the battle- 
stained heroes of the glorious old Army of the Potomac, men of 
whom the nation is already proud, and whom history will teach 
our children to venerate. Alas ! that veterans require more than 
Afield rations;' that heroes will wear out or throw away their 
clothes, or become diseased with scurvy or chronic diarrhoea. 

"The Army of the West had marched almost two thousand 
miles, subsisting from Atlanta to the ocean almost wholly upon 
the country through which it passed. When it entered the des- 
titute regions of North Carolina and Virginia it became affected 
with scorbutic diseases. A return to the ordinary marching 
rations gave the men plenty to eat, but no vegetables. Nor had 
foraging put them in a condition to bear renewed privation. 

"The Commissary Department issued vegetables in such small 
quantities that they did not affect the condition of the troops ui 



208 

any appreciable degree. Surgeons immediately sought the Sani- 
tary Commission. The demand soon became greater than the 
supply. At first they wanted nothing but vegetables, for having 
these, they said, all other discomforts would become as nothing. 

^^ After we had secured an organization through the return of 
agents and the arrival of transportation, a division of labor was 
made, resulting ultimately in three departments, more or less dis- 
tinct. These were: 

" First, the supply of vegetables ; 

^^ Second, the depots for hospital and miscellaneous supplies; 
and, 

" Third, the visitation of troops for the purpose of direct distri- 
bution of small articles of necessity or comfort.'^ 

These men, war-worn — and many of them sick — veterans, were 
without money, often in rags, or destitute of needful clothing, and 
they were not to be paid until they were mustered out of the 
service in their respective States. Generous, thorough and rapid 
distribution was desirable, and all the regular hospital visitors, as 
well as others temporarily employed in the work, entered upon 
the duties of field distribution. In twenty days, such was the 
system and expedition used, every regiment, and all men on de- 
tached duty,>.ad been visited and supplied with necessaries on 
their camping grounds ; and frequent expressions of gratitude 
from officers and men, attested that a great work had been suc- 
cessfully accomplished. 

This was the conclusion of Mrs. Barker's army work, and what 
it was, how thorough, kind, and every way excellent we cannot 
better tell than by appending to this sketch her own report to the 
Chief of Field Eelief Corps. 

" WASHmGTON, D. C, June 29, 1865. 
^' A. M. Sperry — Sir : It was my privilege to witness the advance of the 
army in the spring of 1862, and the care of soldiers in camp and hospital 
having occupied all my time since then, it was therefore gratifying to close my 
labors by welcoming the returning army to the same camping grounds it left 
four years ago. The circumstances under which it went forth and returned 



MRS. STEPHEN BARKER. 209 

were so unlike, the contrast between our tremulous farewell and our exultant 
welcome so extreme, that it has been difficult to find an expression suited to 
the hour. The Sanitary Commission adopted the one method by which alone 
it could give for itself this expression. It sent out its agents to visit every 
regiment and all soldiers on detached duty, to ascertain and relieve their wants, 
and by words and acts of kindness to assure them of the deep and heartfelt gra- 
titude of the nation for their heroic sufferings and achievements. 

"The Second, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and 
Twentieth army corps have been encamped about the capital. They numbered 
over two hundred thousand men. 

"Our first work was to establish stations for sanitary stores in the camps, 
wherever it was practicable, to which soldiers might come for the supply of 
their wants without the trouble of getting passes into Washington. Our Field 
Eelief Agents, who have followed the army from point to point, called on the 
officers to inform them of our storehouse for supplies of vegetables and pickles. 
The report of the Superintendent of Field Relief will show how great a work 
has been done for the army in these respects. How great has been the need of 
a full and generous distribution of the articles of food and clothing may be 
realized by the fact, that here were men unpaid for the last six months, and yet 
to remain so till mustered out of the service in their respective States ; whose 
government accounts were closed, with no sutlers in their regiments, and no 
credit anywhere. Every market-day, numbers of these war-worn veterans have 
been seen asking for some green vegetable from the tempting piles, which were 
forbidden fruits to them. 

" In order to make our work in the army as thorough, rapid, and effective as 
possible, it was decided to accept the services of the 'Hospital Visitors.' They 
have been at home in the hospitals ever since the war began, but never in the 
camp. But we believed that even here they would be safe, and the gifts they 
brought would be more valued because brought by them. 

"Six ladies have been employed by the Sanitary Commission as Hospital 
Visitors. These were temporarily transferred from their hospitals to the field. 

"The Second and Fifth Corps were visited by Mrs. Steel and Miss Abby 
Francis. 

"The Sixth Corps by Mrs. Johnson, Miss Armstrorig, and Mrs. Barker; one 
in each division. 

"The Ninth Corps by Miss Wallace, whose illness afterward obliged her to 
yield her place to Mrs. Barker. 

"The Fourteenth Corps by Miss Armstrong. 

"The Fifteenth and Seventeenth Corps by ladies belonging to those corps — 
Mrs. Porter and Mrs. Bickerdyke — whose '».imirable services rendered other 
presence superfluous. 
27 



210 



"The Twentieth Corps was visited by Mrs. Johnson. 

"The articles selected for their distribution were the same for all the corps; 
while heavy articles of food and clothing were issued by orders from the field 
agents, smaller articles — like towels, handkerchiefs, stationery, sewing mate- 
rials, combs, reading matter, etc. — were left to the ladies. 

"This division of labor has been followed, except in cases where no field 
agent accompanied the lady, and there was no sanitary station in the corps. 
Then the lady agent performed double duty. She was provided with a vehicle, 
and followed by an army wagon loaded with supplies sufiicient for her day's 
distribution, which had been drawn from the Commission storehouse upon a 
requisition approved by the chief clerk. On arriving at the camp, her first call 
was at headquarters, to obtain permission to distribute her little articles, to 
learn how sick the men were, in quarters or in hospital, and to find out the 
numbers in each company. The ladies adopted two modes of issuing supplies : 
some called for the entire company, giving into each man's hand the thing he 
needed; others gave to the orderly sergeant of each company the same propor- 
tion of each article, which he distributed to the men. The willing help and 
heartfelt pleasure of tlie officers in distributing our gifts among their men have 
added much to the respect and affection already felt for them by the soldiers and 
their friends. 

"In Mrs. Johnson's report of her work in the Twentieth Army Corps, she says : 
' In several instances officers have tendered the thanks of their regiments, when 
they were so choked by tears as to render their voices unheard.' 

"I remember no scenes in camp more picturesque than some of our visits 
have presented. The great open army wagon stands under some shade-tree, 
with the officer who has volunteered to help, or the regular Field Agent, stand- 
ing in the midst of boxes, bales, and bundles. Wheels, sides, and every pro- 
jecting point are crowded with eager soldiers, to see what Hhe Sanitary' has 
brought for them. By the side of the great wagon stands the light wagon of 
the lady, with its curtains all rolled up, while she arranges before and around 
her the supplies she is to distribute. Another eager crowd surrounds her, 
patient, kind, and respectful as the first, except that a shade more of softness in 
their look and tone attest to the ever-living power of woman over the rough 
elements of manhood. In these hours of personal communication with the 
soldier, she finds the true meaning of her work. This is her golden opportu- 
nity, when by look, and tone, and movement she may call up, as if by magic, 
the pure influences of home, which may have been long banished by the hard 
necessities of war. Quietly and rapidly the supplies are handed out for Com- 
panies A. B, C, etc., first from one wagon, then the other, and as soon as a 
regiment is completed the men hurry back to their tents to receive their share, 
and write letters on the newly received paper, or apply the long needed comb, 



MRS. STEPHEN BARKER. 211 

or mend tlie gaping seams in their now 'historic garments.' When at Last the 
supplies are exhausted, and sunset reminds us that we are yet many miles from 
home, we gather up the remnants, bid good by to the friendly faces whicli 
already seem like old acquaintances, promising to come again to visit new regi- 
ments to-morrow, and hurry Jiome to prepare for the next day's work. 

"Every day, from the first to the twentieth day of June, our little band of 
missionaries has repeated a day's work such as I have now described. Every 
regiment, except some which were sent home before we were able to reach 
them, has shared alike in what we had to give. And I think I speak for all in 
saying that among the many pleasant memories connected with our sanitary 
work, the last but not the least will be our share in the Field Relief. 
" Yours respectfully, 

"Mus. Stephen Barker." 



AMY M. BRADLEY 




ERY few individuals in our country are entirely igno- 
rant of the beneficent work performed by the Sanitary 
Commission during the late war ; and these, perhaps, 
are the only ones to whom the name of Amy M. Brad- 
ley is unfamiliar. Very early in the war she commenced her 
work for the soldiers, and did not discontinue it until some months 
after the last battle was fought, completing fully her four years 
of service, and making her name a synonym for active, judicious, 
earnest work from the beginning to the end. 

Amy M. Bradley is a native of East Vassalboro', Kennebec 
County, Maine, where she was born September 12th, 1823, the 
yoinigest child of a large family. At six years of age she met 
with the saddest of earthly losses, in the death of her mother. 
From early life it would appear to have been her lot to make her 
way in life by her own active exertions. Her father ceased to 
keep liouse on the marriage of his older daughters, and from that 
time until she was fifteen she lived alternately with them. Then 
she made her first essay in teaching a small private school. 

At sixteen she commenced life as a teacher of public schools, 
and continued the same for more than ten years, or until 1850. 

To illustrate her determined and persistent spirit during the 
first four years of her life as a teacher she taught country schools 
during the summer and winter, and during the spring and fall 
attended the academy in her native town, working for her board 
in private families. 

212 



AMY M. BRADLEY. 213 

/ 

At the age of twenty-one, through the influence of Noah 
Woods, Esq., she obtained an aj)pointment as principal of one of 
the Grammar Schools in Gardiner, Maine, wliere she remained 
until the fall of 1847. At the end of that time she resigned and 
accepted an appointment as assistant in the Winthrop Grammar 
School, Charlestown, Massachusetts, obtained for her by her 
cousin, Stacy Baxter, Esq., the principal of the Harvard Gram- 
mar School in the same city. There she remained until the 
winter of 1849-50, when she applied for a similar situation in 
the Putnam Grammar School, East Cambridge (where higher 
salaries were paid) and was successful. She remained, however, 
only until May, when a severe attack of acute bronchitis so pros- 
trated her strength as to quite unfit her for her duties during the 
whole summer. She had previously suffered repeatedly from 
pneumonia. Her situation was held for her until the autumn, 
when finding her health not materially improved, she resigned 
and prepared to spend the winter at the South in the family of a 
brother residing at Charleston, South Carolina. 

Miss Bradley returned from Charleston the following spring. 
Her winter in the South had not benefited her as she had hoped 
and expected, and she found herself unable to resume her occupa- 
tion as a teacher. 

During the next two years her active spirit chafed in forced 
idleness, and life became almost a burden. In the autumn of 
1853, going to Charlestown and Cambridge to visit friends, she 
met the physician who had attended her during the severe illness 
that terminated her teacher-life. He examined her lungs, and 
gave it as his opinion that only a removal to a warmer climate 
could preserve her life through another winter, and that the fol- 
lowing months of frost and cold spent in the North must undoubt- 
edly in her case develop pulmonary consumption. 

To her these were words of doom. Not possessed of the means 
for travelling, and unable, as she supposed, to obtain a livelihood 



214 

in a far off country, she returned to Maine, and resigned herself 
with what calmness she might, to the fate in store for her. 

But Providence had not yet developed the great work to which 
she was appointed, and though sorely tried, and buffeted, she 
was not to be permitted to leave this mortal scene until the objects 
of her life were fulfilled. Through resignation to death she was, 
perhaps, best prepared to live, and even in that season when earth 
seemed receding from her view, the wise purposes of the Ruler of 
all in her behalf were being worked out in what seemed to be an 
accidental manner. 

In the family of her cousin, Mr. Baxter, at Charlestown, Mas- 
sachusetts, there had been living, for two years, three Spanish 
boys from Costa Rica, Central America. Mr. Baxter was an 
instructor of youth and they were his pupils. About this period 
their father arrived to fetch home a daughter who was at school 
in New York, and to inquire what progress these boys were 
making in their studies. He applied to Mr. Baxter to recom- 
mend some lady who would be willing to go to Costa Rica for 
two or three years to instruct his daughters in the English lan- 
guage. Mr. Baxter at once recommended Miss Bradley as a 
suitable person and as willing and desirous to undertake the 
journey. The situation was offered and accepted, and in Novem- 
ber, 1853, she set sail for Costa Rica. 

/ After remaining a short time with the Spanish family, she 

accepted a proposition from the American Consul, and accompa- 
nied his family to San Jose, the Capital, among the mountains, 
some seven.ty miles from Punta Arenas, where she opened a 
school receiving as pupils, English, Spanish, German, and Ame- 
rican children. This was the first English school established in 
Central America. For three months she taught from a black- 

' board, and at the end of that time received from New York, 

books, maps, and all the needful apparatus for a permanent 
school. 

This school she taught with success for three years. At the 



AMY M. BRADLEY. 215 

end of that time learning that the health of her father, then 
eighty-three years of age, was rapidly declining, and that he was 
unwilling to die without seeing her, she disposed of the property 
and "good-wiir^ of her school, and as soon as possible bade adieu 
to Costa Rica. She reached home on the 1st of June, 1857, 
after an absence of nearly four years. Her father, however, sur- 
vived for several months. 

Her health which had greatly improved during her stay in the 
salubrious climate of San Jose, where the temperature ranges at 
about 70° Fahrenheit the entire year, again yielded before the frosty 
rigors of a winter in the Pine Tree State, and for a long time she 
Avas forced to lead a very secluded life. She devoted herself to 
reading, to the study of the French and German languages, and 
to teaching the Spanish, of which she had become mistress during 
her residence in Costa Rica. 

In the spring of 1861, she went to East Cambridge, where she 
obtained the situation of translator for the New England Glass 
Company, translating commercial letters from English to Spanish, 
or from Spanish to English as occasion required. 

This she would undoubtedly have found a pleasant and profit- 
able occupation, but the boom of the first gun fired at Sumter 
upon the old flag stirred to a strange restlessness the spirit of the 
granddaughter of one who starved to death on board the British 
Prison Ship Jersey, during the revolution. She felt the earnest 
desire, but saw not the way to personal action, until the first 
disastrous battle of Bull Run prompted her to immediate effort. 

She wrote to Dr. G. S. Palmer, Surgeon of the Fifth Regiment 
Maine Volunteers, an old and valued friend, to offer her services 
in caring for the sick and wounded. His reply was quaint and 
characteristic. ^^ There is no law at this end of the route, to pre- 
vent your coming ; but the law of humanity requires your imme- 
diate presence.'^ 

As soon as possible she started for the seat of war, and on the 



216 WOMAIS^^S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR. 

1st of September, 1861, commenced her services as nurse in the 
hospital of the Fifth Maine Regiment. 

The regiment had been enlisted to a great extent from the 
vicinity of Gardiner, Maine, where, as we have said, she had 
taught for several years, and among the soldiers both sick and 
well were a number of her old pupils. 

The morning after her arrival, Dr. Palmer called at her tent, 
and invited her to accompany him through the hospital tents. 
There were four of these, filled with fever cases, the result of 
exposure and hardship at and after the battle of Bull Run. 

In the second tent, were a number of patients delirious from 
the fever, whom the surgeon proposed to send to Alexandria, to 
the General Hospital. To one of these she spoke kindly, asking 
if he would like to have anything; mth a wild look, and evi- 
dently impressed with the idea that he was about to be ordered 
on a long journey, he replied, "I would like to see my mother 
and sisters before I go home.'^ Miss Bradley was much affected 
by his earnestness, and seeing that his recovery was improbable, 
begged Dr. Palmer to let her care for him for his mother and 
sisters' sake, until he went to his last home. He consented, and 
she soon installed herself as nurse of most of the fever cases, 
several of them her old pupils. From morning till night she 
was constantly employed in ministering to these poor fellows, and 
her skill in nursing was often of more service to them than medi- 
cine. 

Colonel Oliver O. Howard, the present Major-General and 
Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, had been up to the end of 
September, 1861, in command of the Fifth Maine Regiment, but 
at that time was promoted to the command of a brigade, and Dr. 
Palmer was advanced to the post of brigade surgeon, while Dr. 
Brickett succeeded to the surgeoncy of the Fifth Regiment. 

By dint of energy, tact and management. Miss Bradley had 
brought the hospital into fine condition, having received cots from 
friends in Maine, and supplies of delicacies and hospital clothing 



AMY M. BRADLEY. 217 

from the Sanitary Commission. General Slocum, the new brigade 
commander, early in October made his first round of inspection 
of the regimental hospitals of the brigade. He found Dr. Brick- 
ett's far better arranged and supplied than any of the others, and 
inquired why it was so. Dr. Brickett answered that they had a 
Maine woman who understood the care of the sick, to take charge 
of the hospital, and that she had drawn supplies from the Sani- 
tary Commission. General Slocum declared that he could have 
no partiality in his brigade, and proposed to take two large build- 
ings, the Powell House and the Octagon House, as hospitals, and 
instal Miss Bradley as lady superintendent of the Brigade Hos- 
pital. This was done forthwith, and with further aid from the 
Sanitary Commission, as the Medical Bureau had not yet made 
any arrangement for brigade hospitals, JNIiss Bradley assisted by 
the zealous detailed nurses from the brigade soon gave these two 
houses a decided " home" appearance. The two buildings would 
accommodate about seventy-five patients, and were soon filled. 
Miss Bradley took a personal interest in each case, as if they were 
her own brothers, and by dint of skilful nursing raised many of 
them from the gi\asp of death. 

A journal which she kept of her most serious cases, illustrates 
very forcibly her deep interest and regard for all " her dear boys" 
as she called them. SJie would not give them up, even when the 
surgeon pronounced their cases hopeless, and though she could 
not always save them from death, she undoubtedly prolonged life 
in many instances by her assiduous nursing. 

On the 10th of March, 1862, Centre ville, Virginia, having 
been evacuated by the rebels, the brigade to which Miss Bradley 
was attached were ordered to occupy it, and five days later the 
Brigade Hospital was broken up and the patients distributed, part 
to Alexandria, and part to Fairfax Seminary General Hospital. 
In the early part of April Miss Bradley moved with the division 
to Warrenton Junction, and after a week's stay in and about 
Manassas the order came to return to Alexandria and embark for 

28 



218 

Yorktown. Returning to "Washington, she now offered her ser- 
vices to the Sanitary Commission, and on the 4th of May was 
summoned by a telegraphic despatch from Mr. F. L. Olmstead, 
the energetic and efficient Secretary of the Commission, to come at 
once to Yorktown. On the 6th of May she reached Fortress 
Monroe, and on the 7th was assigned to the Ocean Queen as lady 
superintendent. We shall give some account of her labors here 
when we come to speak of the Hospital Transport service. Suffice 
it to say, in this place that her services which were very arduous, 
were continued either on the hospital ships or on the shore until 
the Army of the Potomac left the Peninsula for Acquia Creek and 
Alexandria, and that in several instances her kindness to wounded 
rebel officers and soldiers, led them to abandon the rebel service 
and become hearty, loyal Union men. She accompanied the flag 
of truce boat three times, when the Union wounded were exchanged, 
and witnessed some painful scenes, though the rebel authorities 
had not then begun to treat our prisoners with such cruelty as 
they did later in the war. Early in August she accompanied the 
sick and wounded men on the steamers from Harrison's Landing 
to Philadelphia, where they were distributed among the hospitals. 
Diu'ing all this period of hospital transport service, she had had 
the assistance of that noble, faithful, w^orker Miss Annie Ethe- 
ridge, the " Gentle Annie" of the Third Michigan regiment, of 
^vhom we shall have more to say in another place. For a few 
days, after the transfer of the troops to the vicinity of Washing- 
ton, Miss Bradley remained unoccupied, and endeavored by rest 
and quiet to recover her health, which had been much impaired 
by her severe labors. 

A place was, however, in preparation for her, which, while it 
would bring her less constantly in contact with the fearful wounds 
aud terrible sufferings of the soldiers in the field, would require 
more administrative ability and higher business qualities than she 
had yet been called to exercise. 

The Sanitary Commission in their desire to do what they could 



AMY M. BRADLEY. 219 

for the soldier, had planned the establishment of a Home at 
Washington, ^^here the private soldier could go and remain for a 
few days v/hile awaiting orders, without being the prey of the 
unprincipled villains who neglected no opportunity of fleecing 
every man connected with the army, whom they could entice into 
their dens ; where those who were recovering from serious illness 
or wounds could receive the care and attention they needed ; 
where their clothing often travel-stained and burdened with the 
^' Sacred Soil of Virginia," could be exchanged for new, and the 
old washed, cleansed and repaired. It was desirable that this 
Home should be invested with a ^^ home" aspect ; that books, news- 
papers and music should be provided, as well as wholesome and 
attractive food, and that the presence of woman and her kindly 
and gentle ministrations, should exert what influence they might 
to recall vividly to the soldier the liome he had left in a distant 
state, and to quicken its power of influencing him to higher and 
purer conduct, and more earnest valor, to preserve the institutions 
which had made that home what it w^as. 

Rev. F. N. Knapp, the Assistant Secretary of the Commission, 
on Avhom devolved the duty of establishing this Home, had had 
opportunity of observing Miss Bradley's executive ability in the 
Plospital Transport Service, as well as in the management of a 
brigade hospital, and he selected her at once, to take charge of 
the Home, arrange all its details, and act as its Matron. She 
accepted the post, and performed its duties admirably, accommo- 
dating at times a hundred and twenty at once, and by her neat- 
ness, good order and cheerful tact, dispensing happiness among 
those who, poor fellows, had hitherto found little to clieer them. 

But her active and energetic nature was not satisfied with her 
work at the Soldiers' Home. Her leisure hours, (and with her 
prompt business habits, she secured some of these every day), 
were consecrated to visiting the numerous hospitals in and around 
Washington, and if she found the surgeons or assistant surgeons 
negligent and inattentive, they were promptly reported to the 



220 woman's work in the civil war. 

medical director. The condition of the hospitals in the city was, 
however^ much better than that of the hospitals and convalescent 
camps over the river^ in Virginia. A visit which she made to 
one of these^ significantly named by the soldiers, "Camp Misery," 
in Sej)tember, 1862, revealed to her, wretchedness, suffering and 
neglect, such as she had not before witnessed; and she promptly 
secured from the Sanitary Commission such supplies as were 
needed, and in her frequent visits there for the next three months, 
distributed them with her own hands, while she encouraged and 
promoted such changes in the management and arrangements of 
the camp as greatly improved its condition. 

This " Camp Misery " was the original Camp of Distribution, 
to which were sent, 1st, men discharged from all the hospitals 
about Washington, as well as the regimental, brigade, division 
and post hospitals, as convalescent, or as unfit for duty, prepara- 
tory to their final discharge from the army ; 2d, stragglers and 
deserters, recaptured and collected here prejDaratory to being for- 
warded to their regiments ; 3d, new recruits awaiting orders to 
join regiments in the field. Numerous attempts had been made 
to improve the condition of this camp, but owing to the small 
number and inefficiency of the officers detailed to the command, 
it had constantly grown worse. The convalescents, numbering 
nine or ten thousand, were lodged, in the depth of a very severe 
winter, in wedge and Sibley tents, without floors, with no fires, or 
means of making any, amid deep mud or frozen clods, and were 
very poorly supplied with clothing, and many of them without 
blankets. Under such circumstances, it was not to be expected 
that their health could improve. The stragglers and deserters, 
and the new recruits were even worse off than the convales- 
cents. The assistant surgeon and his acting assistants, up to the 
last of October, 1862, were too inexperienced to be competent for 
their duties. 

In December, 1862, orders were issued by the Government for 
the construction of a new Rendezvous of Distribution, at a point 



AMY M. BRADLEY. 221 

near Fort Barnard, Virginia, on the Loudon and Hampshire 
Railroad, the erection of new and more comfortable barracks, and 
tlie removal of the men from the old camp to it. The barracks 
for the convalescents were fifty in number and intended for the 
accommodation of one hundred men each, and they were com- 
pleted in February, 1863, and the new regulations and the ap- 
pointment of new and efficient officers, greatly improved the 
condition of the Rendezvous. 

In December, 1862, while the men were yet in Camp Misery, 
Miss Bradley was sent there as the Special Relief Agent of the 
Sanitary Commission, and took up her quarters there. As we 
have said the condition of the men was deplorable. She ar- 
rived on the 17th of December, and after setting up her tents, 
and arranging her little hospital, cook-room, store-room, wash- 
room, bath-room, and office, so as to be able to serve the men 
most effectually, she passed round with the officers, as the men 
were drawn up in line for inspection, and supplied seventy-five 
men Avith woollen shirts, giving only to the very needy. In 
her hospital tents she soon had forty patients, all of them men 
who had been discharged from the hospitals as well ; these were 
washed, supplied with clean clothing, warmed, fed and nursed. 
Others had discharge papers awaiting them, but were too feeble 
to stand in the cold and wet till their turn came. She obtained 
them for them, and sent the poor invalids to the Soldiers' Home j 
in Washington, en route for their own homes. From May 1st to i 
December 31st, 1863, she conveyed riaore than two thousand dis- ' 
charged soldiers from the Rendezvous of Distribution to the 
Commission's I^odges at Washington ; most of them men suffer- 
ing from incurable disease, and who but for her kind ministrations 
must most of them have perished in the attempt to reach their 
homes. In four months after she commenced her work she had 
had in her little hospital one hundred and thirty patients, of whom 
fifteen died. For these patients as well as for other invalids who 
were unab e to write she wrote letters to their friends, and to the 



222 woman's work ix tpie civil avae. 

friends of the dead she sent full accounts of the last hours of 
their lost ones. The discharged men, and many of those who 
were on record unjustly as deserters, through some informality in 
their papers, often found great difficulty in obtaining their pay, 
and sometimes could not ascertain satisfactorily how much was 
due them, in consequence of errors on the part of the regimental 
or company officers. Miss Bradley was indefatigable in her 
efforts to secure the correction of these papers, and the prompt 
payment of the amounts due to these poor men, many of whom, 
but for her exertion, would have suffered on their arrival at their 
distant homes. Between May 1st and December 31st, 1863, she 
procured the reinstatement of one hundred and fifty soldiers who 
had been dropped from their muster rolls unjustly as deserters, 
and secured their arrears of pay to them, amounting in all to 
nearly eight thousand dollars. 

On the 8th of February, 1864, the convalescents were, by 
general orders from the War Department, removed to the general 
hospitals in and about Washington, and the name changed from 
Camp Distribution to Rendezvous of Distribution, and only strag- 
glers and deserters, and the recruits awaiting orders, or other men 
fit for duty were to be allowed there. For nearly two months 
Miss Bradley was confined to her quarters by severe illness. On 
her recovery she pushed forward an enterprise on which she had 
set her heart, of establishing a weekly paper at the Rendezvous, 
to be called " The Soldiers' Journal," which should be a medium 
of contributions from all the more intelligent soldiers in the camp, 
and the profits from Avhich (if any accrued), should be devoted to 
tlie relief of the children of deceased soldiers. On the 17th of 
February the first number of ^^The Soldiers' Journal" appeared, 
a quarto sheet of eight pages ; it was conducted with considerable 
ability and was continued till the breaking up of the Rendezvous and 
hospital, August 22, 1 865, just a year and a half. The profits of the 
paper were tAventy-one hundred and fifty-five dollars and seventy- 
five cents, beside the value of the printing-press and materials. 



AMY M. BRADLEY. 223 

which amount was held for the benefit of orplians of soldiers who 
had been connected with the camp, and was increased by contri- 
butions from other sources. Miss Bradley, though the proprietor, 
was not for any considerable period the avowed editor of the 
paper, Mr. R. A. Cassidy, and subsequently Mr. Thomas V. 
Cooper, acting in that ca^^acity, but she was a large contributor to 
its columns, and her poetical contributions which appeared in 
almost every number, indicated deep emotional sensibilities, and 
considerable poetic talent. Aside from its interesting reading 
matter, the Journal gave instructions to the soldiers in relation to 
the procurement of the pay and clothing to which they were enti- 
tled; the requisites demanded by the government for the granting 
of furloughs ; and the method of procuring prompt settlement of 
their accounts with the government without the interference of 
claim agents. During the greater part of 1864, and in 1865, until 
the hospital was closed. Miss Bradley, in addition to her other 
duties, was Superintendent of Special Diet to the Augur General 
Hospital, and received and forwarded from the soldiers to their 
friends, about forty-nine hundred and twenty-five dollars. 

The ofl&cers and soldiers of the Rendezvous of Distribution 
were not forgetful of the unwearied labors of Miss Bradley for 
their benefit. On the 22d of February, 1864, she was presented 
with an elegant gold watch and chain, the gift of tlie officers and 
private soldiers of Camp Convalescent, then just broken up. The 
gift was accompanied with a very appropriate address from the 
chaplain of the camp. Rev. William J. Potter. She succeeded in 
winning the regard and esteem of all with whom she was asso- 
ciated. When, in August, 1865, she retired from the service of The 
Sanitary Commission, its secretary, John S. Blatchford, Esq., ad- 
dressed her in a letter expressive of the high sense the Commission 
entertained of her labors, and the great good she had accomplished, 
and the Treasurer of the Commission forwarded her a check as 
for salary for so much of the year 1865 as was passed, to enable her 
to take the rest and relaxation from continuous labor which she 



224 

so greatly needed. In person Miss Bradley is small, erect, and 
possesses an interesting and attractive face, thoughtful, and giving 
evidence in the lines of the mouth and chin, of executive ability, 
energy and perseverance. Her manners are easy, graceful and 
winning, and she evinces in a marked degree the possession of 
that not easily described talent, of which our record furnishes 
numerous examples, which the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 
calls " faculty.^' 



MRS. ARABELLA G. BARLOW. 




ROMANTIC interest encircles the career of this bril- 
liant and estimable lady, which is saddened by her 
early doom, and the grief of her young husband 
bereaved before Peace had brought him that quiet 
domestic felicity for which he doubtless longed. 

Arabella Griffith was born in Somerville, New Jersey, but was 
brought up and educated under the care of Miss Eliza Wallace 
of Burlington, New Jersey, who was a relative upon her father's 
side. As she grew up she developed remarkable powers. Those 
who knew her well, both as relatives and in the social circle, 
speak of her warm heart, her untiring energy, her brilliant con- 
versational powers, and the beauty and delicacy of thought which 
marked her contributions to the press. By all who knew her she 
was regarded as a remarkable woman. 

That she was an ardent patriot, in more than words, who can 
doubt? She sealed her devotion to her country's cause by the 
sublimest sacrifices of which woman is capable — sacrifices in which 
she never faltered even in the presence of death itself. 

Arabella Griffith was a young and lovely woman, the brilliant 
centre of a large and admiring circle. Francis C. Barlow was a 
rising young lawyer with a noble future opening before him. 
These two were about to unite their destinies in the marriage rela- 
tion. 

Into the midst of their joyful anticipations, came the echoes of 
the first shot fired by rebellion. The country sprang to arms 

29 225 



226 

These ardent souls were not behind their fellow-countrymen and 
countrywomen in their willingness to act and to suffer for the land 
and the Government they loved. 

On the 19th of April, 1861, Mr. Barlow enlisted as a private 
in the Twelfth Eegiment New York Militia. On the 20th of 
April they were married, and on the 21st Mr. Barlow left with 
his regiment for Washington. 

In the course of a week Mrs. Barlow followed her husband, 
and remained with him at Washington, and at Harper's Ferry, 
where the Twelfth was presently ordered to join General Patter- 
son's command, until its return home, August 1st, 1861. 

In November, 1861, Mr. Barlow re-entered the service, as 
Lieutenant-Colonel of the Sixty-first New York Volunteers, and 
Mrs. Barlow spent the winter with him in camp near Alexandria, 
Virginia. She shrank from no hardship which it was his lot to 
encounter, and was with him, to help, to sustain, and to cheer 
him, whenever it was practicable for her to be so, and neglected 
QO opportunity of doing good to others which presented itself. 

Colonel Barlow made the Peninsular Campaign in the spring 
and summer of 1862 under McClellan. After the disastrous 
retreat from before Richmond, Mrs. Barlow joined the Sanitary 
Commission, and reached Harrison's Landing on the 2d of July, 
1862. 

Exhausted, wounded, sick and dying men were arriving there 
by scores of thousands — the remnants of a great army, broken by 
a series of terrible battles, disheartened and well-nigh demoralized. 
Many of the best and noblest of our American women Avere there 
in attendance, ready to do their utmost amidst all the hideous 
sights, and fearful sufferings of the hospitals, for these sick, and 
maimed, and wounded men. Mrs. Barlow remained, doing an 
untold amount of work, and good proportionate, until the army 
left in the latter part of August. 

Soon after, with short space for rest, she rejoined her husband 
in the field during the campaign in Maryland, but was obliged to 



MRS. ARABELLA GRIFFITH BARLOW. 227 

go north upon business^ and Avas detained and unable to return 
until the day following the battle of Antietam. 

She found her husband badly wounded, and of course her first 
efforts were for him. She nursed him tenderly and unremittingly, 
giving such assistance as was possible in her rare leisure to the 
other wounded. We cannot doubt that even then she was very 
useful, and with her accustomed energy and activity, made these 
spare moments of great avail. 

General Barlow was unfit for further service until the following 
spring. His wife remained in attendance upon him through the 
winter of 1862-3, and in the spring accompanied him to the 
field, and made the campaign with him from Falmouth to Gettys- 
burg. 

At this battle her husband was again severely wounded. He 
was within the enemy^s lines, and it was only by great effort and 
exposure that she was able to have him removed within our own. 
She remained here, taking care of him, and of the other wounded, 
during the dreadful days that followed, during which the suffer- 
ings of the wounded from the intense heat, and the scarcity of 
medical and other supplies were almost incredible, and altogether 
indescribable. It was after this battle that the efficient aid, and 
the generous supplies afforded by the Sanitary Commission and 
its agents, were so conspicuous, and the results of this beneficent 
organization in the saving of life and suffering perhaps more dis- 
tinctly seen than on any other occasion. Mrs. Barlow, aside from 
her own special and absorbing interest in her husband's case, 
found time to demonstrate that she had imbibed its true spirit. 

Again, through a long slow period of convalescence she watched 
beside her husband, but the spring of 1864 found her in the field 
prepared for the exigencies of Grant's successful campaign of that 
year. 

At times she was with General Barlow in the trenches before 
Petersburg, but on the eve of the fearful battles of the Wilder- 
ness, and the others which followed in such awfully bewildering 



228 woman's mission in the civil war. 

succession, she was to be found at the place these foreshadowed 
events told that she was most needed. At Belle Plain, at Fred- 
ericksburg, and at White House, she was to be found as ever 
actively working for the sick and wounded. A friend and fel- 
low-laborer describes her work as peculiar, and fitting admirably 
into the more exclusive hospital work of the majority of the 
women who had devoted themselves to the care of the soldiers. 
Her great activity and inexhaustible energy showed themselves 
in a sort of roving work, in seizing upon and gathering up such 
things as her quick eye saw were needed. ^'We called her ^the 
Raider,' '^ says this friend, who was also a warm admirer. "At 
Fredericksburg she had in some way gained possession of a 
wretched-looking pony, and a small cart or farmer's wagon, with 
which she was continually on the move, driving about town or 
country in search of such provisions or other articles as were 
needed for the sick and wounded. The surgeon in charge had 
on one occasion assigned her the task of preparing a building, 
which had been taken for a hospital, for a large number of 
wounded who were expected almost immediately. I went with 
my daughter to the building. It was empty, containing not the 
slightest furniture or preparation for the sufferers, save a large 
number of bed-sacks, without straw or other material to fill 
them. 

"On requisition a quantity of straw was obtained, but not 
nearly enough for the expected need, and we were standing in a 
kind of mute despair, considering if it were indeed possible to 
secure any comfort for the poor fellows expected, when Mrs. 
Barlow came in. ^I'll find some more straw,' was her cheerful 
reply, and in another moment she was urging her tired beast 
toward another part of the town where she remembered having 
seen a bale of the desired article earlier in the day. Half an 
hour afterward the straAv had been confiscated, loaded upon the 
little wagon by willing hands, and brought to the hospital. She 
then helped to fill and arrange the sacks, and afterwards drove 



MRS. ARABELLA GRIFFITH BARLOW. 229 

about the town in search of articles^ which, by the time the am- 
bulances brought in their freight of misery and pain, had served 
to furnish the place with some means of alleviation.'^ 

Through all these awful days she labored on unceasingly. 
Her health became somewhat impaired, but she paid no heed to 
the warning. Her thoughts were not for herself, her cares not 
for her own sufferings. Earlier attention to her own condition 
might perhaps, have arrested the threatening symptoms, but she 
was destined to wear the crown of martyrdom, and lay down the 
beautiful life upon which so many hopes clung, her last sacrifice 
upon the altar of her country. The extracts which we append 
describe better the closing scenes of her life than we can. The 
first is taken from the Sanitary Commission Bulletin ^ of August 
15, 1864, and we copy also the beautiful tribute to the memory 
of the departed contributed by Dr. Francis Lieber, of Columbia 
College, to the New York Evening Post. The briefer extract is 
from a letter which appeared in the columns of the New York 
Herald of July 31st, 1864. 

"Died at Washington, July 27, 1864, Mrs. Arabella Griffith 
Barlow, wife of Brigadier-General Francis C. Barlow, of fever 
contracted while in attendance upon the hospitals of the Army 
of the Potomac at the front. 

" With the commencement of the present campaign she became 
attached to the Sanitary Commission, and entered upon her 
sphere of active work during the pressing necessity for willing 
hands and earnest hearts, at Fredericksburg. The zeal, the 
activity, the ardent loyalty and the scornful indignation for every- 
thing disloyal she then displayed, can never be forgotten by those 
whose fortune it was to be with her on that occasion. Ever 
watchful of the necessities of that trying time, her mind, fruitful 
in resources, was always busy in devising means to alleviate the 
discomforts of the wounded, attendant upon so vast a campaign 
within the enemy's country, and her hand was always ready to 
carry out the devices of her mind. 



230 woman's work in the civil war. 

"Many a fractured limb rested upon a mattress improvised 
from materials sought out and brought together from no one 
knew where but the earnest sympathizing woman who is now 
no more. 

"At Fredericksburg she labored with all her heart and mind. 
The sound of battle in which her husband was engaged, floating 
back from Chancellorsvillej stimulated her to constant exertions. 
She faltered not ar^ instant. Remaining till all the wounded 
had been removed from Fredericksburg, she left with the last 
hospital transport for Port Royal, where she again aided in the 
care of the Avounded, as they were brought in at that point. 
From thence she went to White House, on one of the steamers 
then in the service of the Commission, and immediately going to 
the front, labored there in the hospitals, after the battle of Cold 
Harbor. From White House she passed to City Point, and 
arrived before the battles in front of Petersburg. Going directly 
to the front, she labored there with the same energy and devotion 
she had shown at Fredericksburg and White House. 

" Of strong constitution, she felt capable of enduring all things 
for the cause she loved; but long-continued toil, anxiety and 
privation prepared her system for the approach of fever, which 
eventually seized upon her. 

"Yielding to the solicitation of friends she immediately returned 
to Washington, where, after a serious illness of several weeks, she, 
when apparently convalescing, relapsed, and fell another martyr 
to a love of country." 

Dr. Lieber says: "Mrs. Barlow, (Arabella Griffith before she 
married), was a highly cultivated lady, full of life, spirit, activity 
and charity. 

"General Barlow entered as private one of our New York 
volunteer regiments at the beginning of the war. The evening 
before he left New York for Washington with his regiment, they 
were married in the Episcopal Church in Lafayette Place. 
Barlow rose, and as Lieutenant-Colonel, made the Peninsular 



MES. ARABELLA GRIFFITH BARLOW. 2-31 

campaign under General McClellan. He was twice severely- 
wounded, the last time at Antietam. Since then we have always 
read his name most honorably mentioned, whenever Major- 
General Hancock's Corps was spoken of. Mrs. Barlow in the 
meantime entered the Sanitary service. In the Peninsular cam- 
paign she was one of those ladies who worked hard and nobly, 
close to the battle-field, as close indeed as they were permitted to 
do. When her husband v/as wounded she attended, of course, 
upon him. In the present campaign of General Grant she has 
been at Belle Plain, White House, and everywhere where our 
good Sanitary Commission has comforted the dying and rescued 
the many wounded from the grave, which they would otherwise 
have found. The last time I heard of her she was at White 
House, and now I am informed that she died of typhus fever in 
Washington. No doubt she contracted the malignant disease in 
performing her hallowed and self-imposed duty in the field. 

^^ Her friends will mourn at the removal from this life of so 
noble a being. All of us are the poorer for her loss; but our 
history has been enriched by her death. Let it always be remem- 
bered as one of those details which, like single pearls, make up 
the precious string of history, and which a patriot rejoices to con- 
template and to transmit like inherited jewels to the rising gene- 
rations. Let us remember as American men and women, that 
here we behold a young advocate, highly honored for his talents 
by all who knew him. He joins the citizen army of his country 
as a private, rises to command, is wounded again and again, and 
found again and again at the head of his regiment or division, in 
the fight where decision centres. And here is his bride — accom- 
plished, of the fairest features, beloved and sought for in society 
— who divests herself of the garments of fasliion, and becomes 
the assiduous nurse in the hospital and on the field, shrinking 
from no sickening sight, and fearing no typhus — that dreadful 
enemy, which in war follows the wings of the angel of death, like 
the fever-bearing currents of air — until she, too, is laid on the 



232 

couch of the campj and bidden to rest from her weary work, and 
to let herself be led ^yy the angel of death to the angel of life. 
God bless her memory to our women, our men, our country. 

" There are many glories of a righteous war. It is glorious to 
fight or fall, to bleed or to conquer, for so great and good a cause 
as ours; it is glorious to go to the field in order to help and to 
heal, to fan the fevered soldier and to comfort the "bleeding brother, 
and thus helping, may be to die with him the death for our coun- 
try. Both these glories have been vouchsafed to the bridal pair." 

The Herald correspondent, writing from Petersburg, July 31, 
says : 

" General Miles is temporarily in command of the First Division 
during the absence of General Barlow, who has gone home for a 
few days for the purpose of burying his wife. The serious loss 
which the gallant young general and an extensive circle of friends 
in social life have sustained by the death of Mrs. Barlow, is largely 
shared by the soldiers of this army. She smoothed the dying 
pillow of many patriotic soldiers before she received the summons 
to follow them herself; and many a surviving hero who has 
languished in army hospitals will tenderly cherish the memory of 
her saintly ministrations when they were writhing with the pain 
of wounds received in battle or lost in the delirium of consuming 
fevers." 

To these we add also the cordial testimony of Dr. W. H. Reed, 
one of her associates, at City Point, in his recently published 
" Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac :" 

^^ Of our own more immediate party, Mrs. General Barlow was 
the only one who died. Her exhausting work at Fredericksburg, 
where the largest powers of administration were displayed, left 
but a small measure of vitality with which to encounter the severe 
exposures of the poisoned swamps of the Pamunky, and the 
malarious districts of City Point. Here, in the open field, she 
toiled with Mr. Marshall and Miss Gilson, under the scorching 
sun, with no shelter from the pouring rains, with no thought but 



MES. AEABELLA GEIFFITH BARLOW. 233 

for those who were suifering and dying all around her. On the 
battle-field of Petersburg, hardly out of range of the enemy, and 
at night witnessing the blazing lines of fire from right to left, 
among the wounded, with her sympathies and powers of both 
mind and body strained to the last degree, neither conscious that 
she was working beyond her strength, nor realizing the extreme 
exhaustion of her system, she fainted at her Avork, and found, 
only when it was too late, that the raging fever was wasting her 
life away. It was strength of will w^hich sustained her in this 
intense activity, Vv^hen her poor, tired body was trying to assert its 
own right to repose. Yet to the last, her sparkling wit, her 
brilliant intellect, her unfailing good humor, lighted up our 
moments of rest and recreation. So many memories of her beau- 
tiful constancy and self-sacrifice, of her bright and genial com- 
panionship, of her rich and glowing sympathies, of her warm and 
loving nature, ome back to me, that I feel how inadequate would 
be any tribute I could pay to her worth.^' 

30 



MRS. NELLIE MARIA TAILOR 




HE Southwest bore rank weeds of secession and treason, 
spreading poison and devastation over that portion of 
onr fair national heritage. But from the same soil, 
amidst the- ruin and desolation which followed the 
breaking out of the rebellion, there sprang up grov\i3hs of loyalty 
and patriotism, wdiich by flowering and fruitage, redeemed the 
land from the curse that had fallen upon it. 

Among the women of the Southwest have occurred instances 
of the most devoted loyalty, the most self-sacrificing patriotism. 
They have suffered deeply and worked nobly, and their efforts 
alone have been sufficient to show that no part of our fair land 
was irrecoverably doomed to fall beneath the ban of a govern- 
ment opposed to freedom, truth, and progress. 

Prominent among these noble women, is Mrs. Xellie Maria 
Taylor, of New Orleans, whose sufferings claim our warmest 
sympathy, and vv^iose work our highest admiration and gratitude. 

Mrs. Taylor, whose maiden name was Dewey, was born in 
Watertown, Jefferson county, New York, in the year 1821, of 
New England parentage. At an early age she removed with her 
parents to the West, where, as she says of herself, she ^^ grew up 
among the Indians," and perhaps, by her free life, gained some- 
thing of the firmness of health and strength of character and pur- 
pose, which have brought her triumphantly through the trials 
and labors of the past four years. 

She married early, and about the year 1847 removed with her 

234 





Mrs. Nellie :Maria Taylor. 



MPvS. :n^ellie masia taylor 235 

husband^ Dr. Taylor^ and her two children^ lo 'New Orleans, 
where she has since resided. Consequently she was there through 
the entire secession movement, during which, by her firm and 
unswerving loyalty, she contrived to render herself somewhat 
obnoxious to those surrounding her, of opposite sentiments. 

Mrs. Taylor watched anxiously the progress of the movements 
which preceded the outbreak, and fearlessly, though not obtru- 
sively, expressed her own adverse opinions. At this time her eldest 
son was nineteen years of age, a noble and promising youth. He 
was importuned by his friends and associates to join some one of 
the many companies then forming, but as he was about to 
graduate in the high school, he and his family made that an ob- 
jection. As soon as he graduated a lieutenancy was offered him 
in one of the companies, but deferring an answer, he left imme- 
diately for a college in the interior. Two months after the 
college closed its doors, and the students, urged by the faculty, 
almost en-masse entered the army. Mrs. Taylor, to remove her 
son, sent him at once to the north, and rejoiced in the belief that 
he was safe. 

Immediately after this her persecutions commenced. Her hus- 
band had been ill for more than two years, while she supported 
her family by teaching, being principal of one of the city public 
schools. One day she was called from his bed-side to an interview 
with one of the Board of Directors of the schools. 

By him she was accused (?) of being a Unionist, and informed 
that it was believed that she had sent her son away " to keep him 
from fighting for his country.'^ Knowing the gentleman to be a 
northern man, she answered freely, saying that the country of 
herself and son was the whole country, and for it she was willing 
he should shed his last drop of blood, but not to divide and muti- 
late it, would she consent that he should ever endanger himself. 

The consequence of this freedom of speech was her dismissal 
from her situation on the following day. With her husband ill 
unto death, her house mortgaged, her means of livelihood taken 



236 WOMAN S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR. 

away, she could only look upon the future with dark forebodings 
which nothing but her faith in God and the justice of her cause 
could subdue. 

A short time at^er a mob assembled to tear down her house. 
She stepped out to remonstrate with them against pulling down 
the house over the head of a dying man. The answer was, 
•' ^ladam, we give you five minutes to decide whether you are for 
the South or the North. If at the end of that time you declare 
yourself for the South, your house shall remain; if for the Xorth, 
it must come down.'^ 

Her answer was memorable. 

" Sir, I will say to you and your crowd, and to the world if 
you choose to summon it — I am, always have been, and ever 
shall be, for the Union. Tear my house down if you choose !" 

Awed perhaps by her firmness, and unshrinking devotion, the 
spokesman of the mob looked at her steadily for a moment, then 
turning to the crowd muttered something, and they followed him 
away, leaving her unmolested. This man was a renegade Boston 
Yankee. 

Such was her loye for the national flag that during all this 
period of persecution, previous to General Butler's taking posses- 
sion of the city she never slept without the banner of the free 
above her head, although her house was searched no less than 
seven times b}^ a mob of chivalrous gentlemen, varying in num- 
ber from two or three score to three hundred, led by a judge who 
deemed it not beneath his dignity to preside over a court of jus- 
tice by day, and to search the premises of a defenseless woman 
by night, in the hope of finding the Union flag, in order to have 
an excuse for ejecting her from the cit}^, because she was well 
known to entertain sentiments inimical to the interests of seces- 
sion. 

Before the South ran mad with treason, Mrs. Taylor and the 
wife of this judge were intimate friends, and their intimacy had 
not entirely ceased so late as the early months of 1862. It was 



MRS. NELLIE MARIA TAYLOR. 237 

late in February of that year that Mrs. Taylor was visiting at 
the judge's house, and during her visit the judge's son, a young 
man of twenty, taunted her with various epithets, such as a 
^^ Lincoln Emissary," ^^a traitor to her country," "a friend of Lin- 
coln's hirelings," etc. She listened quietly, and then as quietly 
remarked that ^^he evidently belonged to that very numerous 
class of young men in the South who evinced their courage by 
applying abusive epithets to women and defenseless persons, but 
showed a due regard to their own safety, by running away — as at 
Donelson — whenever they were likely to come into contact Avith 
^^ Lincoln's hirelings." 

The same evening, at a late hour, while Mrs. Taylor was 
standing by the bed-side of her invalid husband, preparing some 
medicine for him, she heard the report of a rifle and felt the wind 
of a minie bullet as it passed close to her head and lodged in the 
wall. In the morning she dug the ball out of the wall and took 
it over to the judge's house which was opposite to her own. 
When the young man came in Mrs. Taylor handed it to him, and 
asked if he knew what it was. He turned pale, but soon re- 
covered his composure sufficiently to reply that '4t looked like a 
rifle-ball." ^^ Oh, no," said Mrs. Taylor, " you mistake ! It is a 
piece of Southern chivalry fired at a defenseless woman, in the 
middle of the night, by the son of a judge, whose courage should 
entitle him to a commission in the Confederate army." 

Still, brave as she was, she could not avoid some feeling, if not 
of trepidation, at least of anxiety, at being thus exposed to mid- 
night assassination, while her life was so necessary to her helpless 
family. 

These are but a few instances out of many, of the trials she had 
to endure. Her son hearing of them, through the indiscretion 
of a school-friend, hastened home, determined to enlist in the 
Confederate army to save his parents from further molestation. 
He enlisted for ninety days, hoping thus to shield his family from 
persecution, but the Conscription Act, which shortly after went 



238 

into effect^ kept liim in the position for which his opinions so un- 
fitted him. From the spring of 1862, he remained in the Con- 
federate army, gaining rapid promotion, and distinguished for his 
bravery, until the close of the war, when he returned home un- 
changed in sentiment, and unharmed by shot or shell — in this 
last particular more fortunate than thousands of others forced by 
conscription into the ranks, and sacrificing their lives for a cause 
with which they had no sympathy. 

From the time of her son^s enlistment IMrs. Taylor was nearly 
free from molestation, and devoted herself to the care of her 
family, until the occupation of ]N'ew Orleans by the Union forces. 
She was then reinstated in her position as teacher, and after the 
establishment of Union hospitals, she spent all her leisure 
moments in ministering to the wants of the sick and wounded. 

In 1863, we hear of her as employing all her summer vacation, 
as well as her entire leisure-time when in school, in visiting the 
hospitals, attending the sick and wounded soldiers, and preparing 
for them such delicacies and changes of food and other comforts 
as she could procure from her own purse, and by the aid of others. 
From that time forward until the close of the war, or until the 
hospitals were closed by order of the Government, she continued 
this work, expending her whole salary upon these suifering men, 
and never omitting anything by which she might minister to their 
comfort. 

Thousands of soldiers can bear testimony to her unwearied 
labors ; it is not wanting, and will be her best reward. One of 
these writers says, "I do assure you it affords me the greatest 
pleasure to be able to add my testimony for that good, that noble, 
that blessed woman, Mrs. Taylor. I w^as Avounded at Port Hud- 
son in May, 1863, and lay in the Barracks General Hospital at 
New Orleans for over three months, when I had an excellent 
opportunity to see and know her work. ^ ^ ^ glie worked 
every day in the hospital — all her school salary she spent for the 
soldiers — night after night she toiled, and long after others were 



MRS. NELLIE MAPwIA TAYLOR. 239 

at rest she was busy for the suffering/^ And another makes it 
a matter of personal thankfuhiess that he should have been 
applied to for information in regard to this "blessed woman/^and 
repeats his thanks " for himself and hundreds of others/' that her 
services are to be recorded in this book. 

Having great facility in the use of her pen, Mrs. Taylor made 
herself especially useful in v/riting letters for the soldiers. During 
the year from January 1864 to January 1865, she wrote no less than 
eleven hundred and seventy-four letters for these men, and even 
now, since the close of the war, her labors in that direction do not 
end. She is in constant communication with friends of soldierr? 
in all parts of the country, collecting for them every item of per- 
sonal information in her power, after spending hours in search- 
ing hospital records, and all other available sources for obtaining 
the desired knowledge. 

During the summer of 1864, her duties were more arduous 
than at any other time. She distributed several thousands of 
dollars worth of goods, for the Cincinnati Branch of the United 
States Sanitary Commission, and on the 1st of June, when her 
vacation commenced, she undertook the management of the 
Dietetic Department in the University Hospital, the largest in 
New Orleans. From that time till October 1st, she, with her 
daughter and four other ladies, devoted like herself to the work, 
with their own hands, with the assistance of one servant only, 
cooked, prepared, and administered all the extra diet to the 
patients, numbering frequently five or six hundred on diet, at one 
time. 

Two of these ladies were constantly at the hospital, Mrs. Tay- 
lor frequently four days in the week, and ^vhen not there, in other 
hospitals, not allowing herself one day at home during the whole 
vacation. When oblio^ed to return to her school, her dauo^hter, 
Miss Alice Taylor, took her place, and with the other ladies con 
tinued, Mrs. Taylor giving her assistance on Saturday and Sun 
day, till January 1st, 1865, when the hospital was finally closed. 



240 



Mrs. Taylor has been greatly aided by her children ; her 
daughter, as nobly patriotic as herself, in the beginning of the 
war refusing to present a Confederate flag to a company unless 
beneath an arch ornamented, and with music the same as on occa.- 
sion of presenting a banner to a political club the preceding year 
— viz: the arch decorated with United States flags, and the 
national airs played. Her son " Johnnie'^ is as well known and 
as beloved by the soldiers as his mother, and well nigh sacrificed 
his noble little life to his unwearied eflbrts in their behalf. 

It is out of the fiery furnace of trial that such nobly devoted 
persons as Mrs. Taylor and her family come forth to their mission 
of beneficence. Persecuted, compelled to make the most terrible 
and trying sacrifices, in dread and danger continually, the work 
of the loyal women of the South stands pre-eminent, among the 
labors of the noble daughters of America. And of these, Mrs. 
Taylor and her associates, and of Union women throughout the 
South, it may well and truly be said, in the words of Holy Writ : 
Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them 
all. 



MRS. ADALINE TYLER 




RS. TYLER^ the subject of the following sketch, is a 
native of Massachusetts, and for many years was a 
resident of Boston, in which city from her social posi- 
tion and her piety and benevolence she was widely 
known. She is a devout member of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church, greatly trusted and respected both by clergy and laity. 

In 1856, she removed from Boston to Baltimore, Maryland. 
It was the desire of Bishop Whittingham of that Diocese to 
institute there a Protestant Sisterhood, or Order of Deaconesses, 
similar to those already existing in Germany, England, and per- 
haps other parts of Europe. Mrs. Tyler, then a widow, was 
invited to assume the superintendence of this order — a band of 
noble and devout women who turning resolutely from the world 
and its alhirements and pleasures, desired to devote their lives 
and talents to works of charity and mercy. 

To care for the sick, to relieve all want and suifering so far as 
lay in their power, to administer spiritual comfort, to give of 
their own substance, and to be the almoners of those pious souls 
whose duties lay in other directions, and whose time necessarily 
absorbed in other cares, did not allow the same self-devotion — 
this was the mission which they undertook, and for years j)rose- 
cuted with untiring energy, and undoubted success. 

In addition to her general superintendence of the order, Mrs. 
Tyler administered the affairs of the Church Home, a charitable 
Institution conducted by the Sistei'hood, and occupied herself in 

3i 241 



242 

a variety of pious and benevolent duties, among which were 
visiting the sick, and comforting the afflicted and prisoners. 
Among other things she devoted one day in each week to visiting 
the jail of Baltimore, at that time a crowded and ill-conducted 
prison, and the abode of a great amount of crime and suffering. 

Mrs., then known as Sister Tyler, had been five years in Bal- 
timore, filling up the time with her varied duties and occupa- 
tions, when the storm that had so long threatened the land, burst 
in all the thunderbolts of its fury. Secession had torn from the 
Union some of the fairest portions of its domain, and already 
stood in hostile attitude all along the borders of the free jSTorth. 
The President, on the 15th of April, 1861, issued his first pro- 
clamation, announcing the presence of rebellion, commanding the 
insurgents to lay down their arms and return to their allegiance 
withm twenty days, and calling on the militia of the several 
loyal States to the number of seventy-five thousand, to assemble 
for the defense of their country. 

This proclamation, not unexpected at the JSTorth, yet sent a 
thrill of mingled feeling all through its bounds. The order was 
promptly obeyed, and without delay the masses prepared for the 
struggle which lay before them, but of which, as yet, no prophetic 
visions foretold the progress or result. Immediately regiment 
after regiment was hurried forward for the protection of the 
Capitol, supposed to be the point most menaced. Among these, 
and of the very earliest, was the Sixth Regiment Massachusetts 
Volunteers, of which the nucleus was the I^owell City Guards. 

On the memorable and now historical 19th of April, this regi- 
ment while hurrying to the defense of Washington was assailed 
by a fierce and angry mob in the streets of Baltimore, and several 
of its men were murdered; and this for marching to the defense 
of their country, to which the citizens of Baltimore, their assail- 
ants, were equally pledged. 

This occurred on a Friday, the day as before stated, set apart 
by Mrs. Tyler for her weekly visit to the jail. The news of the 



MRS. ADALINE TYLER. 243 

riot reached her as she ^.vas about setting out upon this errand of 
mercy, and caused her to postpone her visit for several hours, as 
her way lay through some portion of the disturbed district. 

When, at last, she did go, a degree of quiet prevailed, though 
slie saw wounded men being conveyed to their homes, or to places 
where they might be cared for, and it was evident that the public 
excitement had not subsided with hostilities. Much troubled 
concerning the fate of the Northern men — men, it must be 
remembered, of her own State — who had been stricken down, 
slie hastened to conclude as soon as possible her duties at the 
jail, and returning homeward despatched a note to a friend asking 
him to ascertain and inform her what had become of the wounded 
soldiers. The reply soon came, with the tidings that they had 
been conveyed to one of the Station Houses by the Police, and 
were said to have been cared for, though the writer had not been 
allowed to enter and satisfy himself that such was the case. 

This roused the spirit of Mrs. Tyler. Here was truly a work 
of "charity and mercy,'^ and it was clearly her duty, in pursu- 
ance of the objects to which she had devoted her life, to ensure 
the necessary care of these wounded and suffering men who had 
fallen into the hands of those so inimical to them. 

It was now late in the afternoon. Mrs. Tyler sent for a car- 
riage which she was in the habit of using whenever need required, 
and the driver of which was honest and personally friendly, 
though probably a secessionist, and proceeded to the Station 
House. By this time it was quite dark, and she was alone. 
Alighting she asked the driver to give her whatever aid she 
might need, and to come to her should he even see her beckon 
from a window, and he promised compliance. 

She knocked at the door, but on telling her errand was denied 
admittance, with the assurance that the worst cases had been sent 
to the Infirmary, while those who were in the upper room of the 
Station House had been properly cared for, and were in bed for 
the night. She again asked to be allowed to see tliem, adding 



244 

that the care of the suffering was her life work, and she would 
like to assure herself that they needed nothing. She was again 
denied more peremptorily than before. 

^^ Very well/' she replied, ^' I am myself a Massachusetts woman, 
seeking to do good to the citizens of my own state. If not allowed 
to do so, I shall immediately send a telegram to Governor Andrew, 
informing him that my request is denied.'^ 

This spirited reply produced the desired result, and after a 
little consultation among the officials, who probably found the 
Governor of a State a much more formidable antagonist than a 
woman, coming alone on an errand of mercy, the doors were 
opened and she was conducted to that upper room where the 
fallen patriots lay. 

Two were already dead. Two or three were in bed, the rest 
lay in their misery upon stretchers, helpless objects of the tongue 
abuse of the profane wretches who, "dressed in a little brief 
authority,'^ walked up and down, thus pouring out their wrath. 
All the wounded had been drugged, and were either partially or 
entirely insensible to their miseries. Some eight or ten hours 
had elapsed since the wounds were received, but no attention had 
been paid to them, further than to staunch the blood by thrust- 
ing into them large pieces of cotton cloth. Even their clothes 
had not been removed. One of them (Coburn) had been shot in 
the hip, another (Sergeant Ames) was wounded in the back of 
the neck, just at the base of the brain, apparently by a heavy 
glass bottle, for pieces of the glass yet remained in the wound, 
and lay in bed, still in his soldier's overcoat, the rough collar of 
which irritated the ghastly wound. These two were the most 
dangerously hurt. 

Mrs. Tyler with some difficulty obtained these men, and pro- 
curing, by the aid of her driver, a furniture van, had them laid 
upon it and conveyed to her house, the Deaconesses' Home. 
Here a surgeon was called, their wounds dressed, and she extended 
to them the care and kindness of a mother, until they were so 



MRS. ADALTNE TYLER. 245 

nearly well as to be able to proceed to their own homes. She during 
this time refused protection from the police, and declared that she 
felt no fears for her own safety while thus strictly in the line of 
the duties to which her life was pledged. 

This was by no means the last work of this kind performed by 
Sister Tyler. Other wounded men were received and cared for 
by her — one a German, member of a Pennsylvania Regiment, 
(who was accidentally shot by one of his own comrades) whom 
she nursed to health in her own house. 

For her efforts in behalf of the Massachusetts men she received 
the personal acknowledgments of the Governor, President of the 
Senate, and Speaker of the House of Representatives of that State, 
and afterwards resolutions of thanks were passed by the Legisla- 
ture, or General Court, which, beautifully engrossed upon parch- 
ment, and sealed with the seal of the Commonwealth, were pre- 
sented to her. 

In all that she did, Mrs. Tyler had the full approval of her 
Bishop, as well as of her own conscience, while soon after at the 
suggestion of Bishop Whittingham, the Surgeon-General offered, 
and indeed urged upon her, the superintendency of the Camden 
Street Hospital, in the city of Baltimore. . Her experience in the 
management of the large institution she had so long superintended, 
her familiarity with all forms of suffering, as well as her natural 
tact and genius, and her high character, eminently fitted her for 
this position. 

Her duties were of course fulfilled in the most admirable man- 
ner, and save that she sometimes came in contact with the mem- 
bers of some of the volunteer associations of ladies who, in their 
commendable anxiety to minister to the suffering soldiers, occa- 
sionally allowed their zeal to get the better of their discretion, 
gave satisfaction to all concerned. She did not live in the Hos- 
pital, but spent the greater part of the time there during the year 
of her connection with it. Circumstances at last decided her to 
leave. Her charge she turned over to Miss Williams, of Boston, 



246 

whom she had herself brought thither^ and then weiit northward 
to visit her friends. 

She had not long been in the city of New York before she was 
urgently desired by the Surgeon-General to take charge of a large 
hospital at Chester, Pennsylvania, just established and greatly 
needing the ministering aid of women. She accepted the appoint- 
ment, and proceeding to Boston selected from among her friends, 
and those who had previously offered their services, a corps of 
excellent nurses, who accompanied her to Chester. 

In this hospital there was often from five hundred to one thou- 
sand sick and wounded men, and Mrs. Tyler had use enough for 
the ample stores of comforts which, by the kindness of her friends 
in the east, w^ere continually arriving. Indeed there was never a 
time when she was not amply supplied with these, and with 
money for the use of her patients. 

She remained at Chester a year, and was then transferred to 
Annapolis, where she was placed in charge of the ISTaval School 
Hospital, remaining there until the latter part of May, 1864. 

This was a part of her service which perhaps drew more 
heavily than any other upon the sympathies and heart of Mrs. 
Tyler. Here, during the period of her superintendency, the poor 
wrecks of humanity from the prison pens of Andersonville and 
Belle Isle were brought, an assemblage of such utter misery, such 
dreadful suffering, that words fail in the description of it. Here 
indeed was a ^^ work of charity and mercy," such as had never 
before been presented to this devoted woman ; such, indeed, as the 
world had never seen. 

Most careful, tender, and kindly were the ministrations of Mrs. 
Tyler and her associates — a noble band of women — to these 
wretched men. Filth, disease, and starvation had done their 
work upon them. Emaciated, till only the parchment-like skin 
covered the protruding bones, many of them too feeble for the 
least exertion, and their minds scarcely stronger than their bodies, 



MRS. ADALINE TYLER. 247 

they were indeed a speetacle to inspire, as they did, the keenest 
sympathy, and to call for every effort of kindness. 

Mrs. Tyler procured a number of photographs of these wretclied 
men, representing them in all their squalor and emaciation. 
These were the first which were taken, though the Government 
afterwards caused some to be made which were widely distributed. 
With these Mrs. Tyler did much good. She had a large number 
of copies printed in Boston, after her return there, and both in 
this country and in Europe, which she afterwards visited, often 
had occasion to bring them forward as unimpeachable witnesses 
of the truth of her own statements. Sun pictures cannot lie, and 
the sun's testimony in these brought many a heart shudderingly 
to a belief which it had before scouted. In Europe, particularly, 
both in England and upon the Continent, these pictures com- 
pelled credence of those tales of the horrors and atrocities of rebel 
prison pens, which it had long been the fashion to hold as mere 
sensation stories, and libels upon the chivalrous South. 

Whenever referring to her work at Annapolis for the returned 
prisoners, Mrs. Tyler takes great pleasure in expressing her ap- 
preciation of the valuable and indefatigable services of 'the late 
Dr. Vanderkieft, Surgeon in charge of the Naval School Hospital. 
In his efforts to resuscitate the poor victims of starvation and 
cruelty, he was indefatigable, never sparing himself, but bestowing 
upon them his unwearied personal attention and sympathy. In 
this he was aided by his wife, herself a true Sister of Charity. 

Mrs. Tyler also gives the highest testimony to the services and 
personal worth of her co-workers. Miss Titcomb, Miss Hall, and 
others, who gave themselves with earnest zeal to the cause, and 
feels how inadequate would have been her utmost efforts amid the 
multitude of demands, but for their aid. It is to them chiefly 
due that so many healthy recreations, seasons of amusement and 
religious instruction were given to the men. 

'During and subsequent to the superintendency of Mrs. Tyler 
at Annapolis a little paper was published weekly at the hospital, 



248 m^oman's work in the civil war. 

under the title of '^ The Crutch." This was well supplied with 
articles^ many of them of real merit, both by officials and pa- 
tients. Whenever an important movement took place, or a bat- 
tle, it was the custom to issue a small extra giving the telegraphic 
account ; when, if it were a victory, the feeble sufferers who had 
sacrificed so much for their country, would spend the last rem- 
nants of their strength, and make the very welkin ring, with 
their shouts of gladness. 

Exhausted by her labors, and the various calls upon her efforts, 
Mrs. Tyler, in the spring of 1864, was at length obliged to send 
in her resignation. Her health seemed utterly broken down, and 
her physicians and friends saw in an entire change of air and 
scene the best hope of her recovery. She had for some time been 
often indisposed, and her illness at last terminated in fever and 
chills. Though well accustomed during her long residence to the 
climate of Maryland, she no longer possessed her youthful pow- 
ers of restoration and reinvigoration. Accordingly it was deter- 
mined that a sea voyage, and a tour in Europe were therefore 
advised as essential to her recovery. 

She left the Naval School Hospital on the 27th of May, 1864, 
and set sail from New York on the 15th of June. 

The disease did not succumb at once, as was hoped. She 
endured extreme illness and lassitude during her voyage, and was 
completely prostrated on her arrival in Paris where she lay three 
weeks ill, before being able to proceed by railroad to Lucerne, 
Switzerland, and rejoin her sister who had been some months in 
Europe, and who, with her family, were to be the traveling com- 
panions of Mrs. Tyler. Arrived at Lucerne, she was again pros- 
trated by chills and fever, and only recovered after removal to 
the dryer climate of Berlin. The next year she was again ill 
with the same disease after a sojourn among the dykes and canals 
of Holland. 

Mrs. Tyler spent about eighteen months in Europe, traveling 
over various parts of tlie Continent, and England, where she 



MRS. ADALINE TYLER. 249 

remained four or five months^ returning to her native land in 
JN^ovember, 1865, to find the desolating war which had raged 
here at the time of her departure at an end. Her health had 
been by this time entirely re-established, and she is happy in the 
belief that long years of usefulness yet remain to her. 

Ardent and fearless in her loyalty to her Government, Mrs. 
Tyler had ample opportunities, never neglected, to impress the 
truth in regard to our country and its great struggle for true 
liberty, upon the minds of persons of all classes in Europe. Her 
letters of introduction from her friends, from Bishop Whittingham 
and others, brought her into frequent contact with people of 
cultivation and refinement who, like the masses, yet held the 
popular belief in regard to the oppression and abuse of the South 
by the North, a belief which Mrs. Tyler even at the risk of 
offending numerous Southern friends by her championship, was 
sure to combat. Like other intelligent loyal Americans she was 
thus the means of spreading right views, and accomplishing 
great good, even Avhile in feeble' health and far from her own 
country. For her services in this regard she might well have 
been named a Missionary of Truth and Liberty. 

One instance of her experience in contact with Southern sym- 
pathizers with the Rebellion, we take the liberty to present to the 
readers of this sketch. Mrs. Tyler was in London when the 
terrible tidings of that last and blackest crime of the Rebellion — 
the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was received. She was 
paying a morning visit to an American friend, a Southerner and 
a Christian, when the door was suddenly thrust open and a 
fiendish-looking man rushed in, vociferating, "Have you heard 
the news ? Old Abe is assassinated ! Seward too ! Johnson es- 
caped. Now if God will send an earthquake and swallow up 
the whole North — men, women, and children, I will say His 
name be praised !" 

All this was uttered as in one breath, and then the restless 
form, and fierce inflamed visage as suddenly disappeared, leaving 

32 



250 woman's woek ik the civil war. 

horrid imprecations upon the ears of the listeners, who never 
supposed the fearful tale could' be true. Mrs. Tyler's friend 
offered the only extenuation possible — the man had "been on 
board the Alabama and was very bitter." But in Mrs. Tyler's 
memory that fearful deed is ever mingled with that fiendish face 
and speech. 

The next day the Rebel Commissioner Mason, replying to 
some remarks of the American Minister, Mr. Adams, in the 
Times, took occasion most emphatically to deprecate the insinu- 
ation that the South had any knowledge of, or complicity in this 
crime. 



MRS. WILLIAM H. HOLSTEIN. 




T the opening of the war Mrs. Holstein was residing 
in a most pleasant and delightful country home at 
Upper Merion, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. 
In the words of one who knows and appreciates her 
well — " Mr. and Mrs. Holstein are people of considerable wealth, 
and unexceptionable social position, beloved and honored by all 
who know them, who voluntarily abandoned their beautiful 
home to live for years in camps and hospitals. Their own deli- 
cacy and modesty would forbid them to speak of the work they 
accomplished, and no one can ever know the greatness of its 
results.^' 

As Mrs. Holstein was always accompanied by her husband, 
and this devoted pair were united in this great patriotic and 
kindly work, as in all the other cases, duties and pleasures of 
life, it would be almost impossible, even if it were necessary, to 
give any separate account of her services for the army. This is 
shown in the following extracts from a letter, probably not 
intended for publication, but which, in a spirit far removed from 
that of self-praise, gives an account of the motives and feelings 
which actuated her, and of the opening scenes of her public 
services. 

^'The story of my work, blended as it is, (and should be) so 
intimately with that of my husband, in his earnest wish to carry 
out what we felt to be simply a matter of duty, is like an ^oft 
told tale' not worth repeating. Like all other loyal women in 

251 



252 

our land, at the first sound and threatening of war, there sprang 
up in my heart an uncontrollable impulse to do, to act; for any- 
thing but idleness when our country was in peril and her sons 
marching to battle. 

"It seemed that the only help woman could give was in pro- 
viding comforts for the sick and w^ounded, and to this, for a time, 
I gave my undivided attention. I felt sure there was work for 
me to do in this war; and when my mother would say ^I hope, 
my child, it will not be in the hospitals,^ — my response was ever 
the same — ^Wherever or whatever it may be, it shall be done 
with all my heart.' 

"At length came the battle of Antietam, and from among us 
six ladies went to spend ten days in caring for the wounded. 
But craven-like, I shrank instinctively from such scenes, and 
declined to join the party. But when my husband returned from 
there, one week after the battle, relating such unheard of stories 
of suffering, and of the help that was needed, I hesitated no 
longer. In a few days we collected a car load of boxes, contain- 
ing comforts and delicacies for the wounded, and had the satis- 
faction of taking them promptly to their destination. 

^^Th.Q first wounded and the. first hospitals I saw I shall never 
forget, for then flashed across my mind, ^ This is the work God 
has given you to do,' and the vow was made, ^ While the war 
lasts we stand pledged to aid, as far as is in our power, the sick 
and suflPering. We have no right to the comforts of our home, 
while so many of the noblest of our land so willingly renounce 
theirs.' The scenes of Antietam are graven as with an ^ iron pen' 
upon my mind. The place ever recalls throngs of horribly 
Avounded men strewn in every direction. So fearful it all looked 
to me then, that I thought the choking sobs and blinding tears 
would never admit of niy being of any use. To suppress them, 
and to learn to be calm under all circumstances, was one of the 
hardest lessons the war taught. 

" We gave up our sweet country home, and from that date 



MRS. WILLIAM H. HOLSTEIN. 253 

were ^dwellers in tents/ occupied usually in field hospitals, 
choosing that work because there was the greatest need, and 
knowing that while many were willing to work at home, but few 
could go to the front." 

From that time, the early autumn of 1862, until July, 1865, 
Mrs. Holstein was constantly devoted to the work, not only in 
camps and hospitals, but in traveling from place to place and 
enlisting the more energetic aid of the people by lecturing and 
special appeals. 

At Antietam Mrs. Holstein found the men she had come to 
care for, those brave, suiFering men, lying scattered all over the 
field, in barns and sheds, under the shelter of trees and fences, in 
need of every comfort, but bearing their discomforts and pain 
without complaint or murmuring, and full of gratitude to those 
who had it in their power to do anything, ever so little, for their 
relief. 

Here she encountered the most trying scenes — a boy of seven- 
teen crying always for his mother to come to him, or to be per- 
mitted to go to her, till the great stillness of death fell upon 
him; agonized wives seeking the remains of the lost, sorrowing 
relatives, of all degrees, some confirmed in their worst fears, some 
reassured and grateful — a constant succession of bewildering emo- 
tions, of hope, fear, sadness and joy. 

The six ladies from her own town, were still for a long time 
busy in their work of mercy distributing freely, as they had been 
given, the supplies with which they had been provided. This 
was eminently a work of faith. Often the stores, of one, or of 
many kinds, would be exhausted, but in no instance did Provi- 
dence fail to immediately replenish those most needed. 

During the stay of Mr. and Mrs. Holstein in Sharpsburg, an 
ambulance was daily placed at their disposal, and they were con- 
tinually going about with it and finding additional cases in need 
of every comfort. Supplies were continually sent from friends at 
home, and they remained until the wounded had all left save a 



254 

few who were retained at Smoketown and Locust Spring Hos- 
pitals. 

While the army rested in the vicinity of Sharpsburg, scores of 
fever patients came pouring in^ making a fearful addition to the 
hospital patients^ and greatly adding to the mortality. 

The party, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Holstein and a friend of 
theirs, a lady, remained until their services w^ere no longer required, 
and then, about the 1st of December, returned home. Busied in 
arrangement for the collection and forwarding of stores, and in 
making trips to Antietam, Harper's Ferry, and Frederick City, 
on similar business, the days wore away until the battle of Fred- 
ericksburg. Soon after this they went to Virginia, and entered 
the Second Corps Hospital near Falmouth. There in a Sibley 
tent whose only floor was of the branches of the pines — in that 
little Hospital on the bleak hill-side, the winter wore slowly 
away. The needful army movements had rendered the muddy 
roads impassable. No chaplain came to the camp until these 
roads were again in good order. Men sickened and died with no 
other religious services performed in their hearing than the simple 
reading of Scripture and prayers which Mrs. Holstein was in the 
habit of using for them, and which were always gladly listened to. 

Just previous to the battle of Chancellorsville, Mrs. Holstein 
returned home for a few days, and was detained on coming back 
to her pQst by the difficulty of getting within the lines. She 
found the hospital moved some tAvo miles from its former location, 
and that many of her former patients had died, or suffered much 
in the change. After the battle there was of course a great acces- 
sion of wounded men. Some had lain long upon the field — one 
group for eleven days, Avith wounds undressed, and almost with- 
out food. The rebels, finding they did not die, reluctantly fed 
them with some of their miserable corn bread, and afterwards sent 
them within the Union lines. 

The site of the hospital where Mrs. Holstein was now stationed, 
was very beautiful. The surgeon in charge had covered the sloping 



MRS. WILLIAM H. HOLSTEIN. 255 

hill-side with a flourishing garden. The convalescents had slowly 
and painfully planted flower seeds, and built rustic arbors. All 
things had begun to assume the aspect of a beautiful home. 

But suddenly, on the 13th of June, 1863, while at dinner, the 
order ^as received to break up the hospital. In two hours the 
wounded men, so great was their excitement at the thought of 
going toward Jiome, were on their way to Washington. 

All was excitement, in fact. The army was all in motion as 
soon as possible. Through the afternoon the work of destruction 
went on. As little as possible was left for the enemy, and when 
Mrs. Holstein awoke the following morning, the plain below was 
covered by a living mass, and the bayonets were gleaming in the 
brilliant sunlight, as the long lines were put in motion, and the 
Army of the Potomac began its northern march. 

Mr. and Mrs. Holstein accompanied it, bearing all its dangers 
and discomforts in company with the men with whom they had 
for the time cast their lot. The heat, dust, and fatigue were 
dreadful, and danger from the enemy was often imminent. At 
Sangster's Station, the breaking down of a bridge delayed the 
crossing of the infantry, and the order was given to reduce the 
officers^ baggage to twenty pounds. 

Then came many of the officers to beg leave to entrust to the 
care of Mr. and Mrs. Holstein, money and valuables. They 
received both in large amounts, and had the satisfaction of carry- 
ing all safely, and having them delivered at last to their rightful 
owners. 

At Union Mills a battle was considered imminent, and Mrs. 
Holstein's tent in the rear of the Union army, was within bugle 
call of the rebel lines. In the morning it was deemed best for 
them to proceed by railroad to Alexandria and Washington, 
whence they could readily return whenever needed. 

At Washington, Mr. Holstein was threatened by an attack of 
malarious fever, and they returned at once to their home. While 
there, and he still unable to move, the battle of Gettysburg was 



256 

fought. In less than a week he left his bed, and the devoted 
pair proceeded thither to renew their services, where they were 
then so greatly needed. 

Mrs. Holstein's first night in this town was passed upon the 
parlor floor of a hotel, with only a satchel for a pillow, where 
fatigue made her sleep soundly. The morning saw them at the 
Field Hospital of the Second Corps, where they were enthusias- 
tically welcomed by their old friends. Here, side by side, just as 
they had been brought in from the field, lay friends and enemies. 

Experience had taught Mr. and Mrs. Holstein how and what 
to do. Very soon their tent was completed, their " Diet Kitchen" 
arranged, the valuable supplies they had brought wdth them ready 
for distribution, and their work moving on smoothly and bene- 
ficially amid all the horrors of this terrible field. 

" There," reports Mrs. Holstein, ^' as in all places where I have 
known our brave Union soldiers, they bore their sufferings bravely, 
I might almost say exultingly, because they were for ^The Flag' 
and our country." 

The scenes of horror and of sadness enacted there, have left 
their impress upon the mind of Mrs. Holstein in unfading charac- 
ters. And yet, amidst these there were some almost ludicrous, as 
for instance, that of the soldier, White, of the Twentieth Massa- 
chusetts, who, supposed to be dead, was borne, with two of his 
comrades, to the grave side, but revived under the rude shock 
with which the stretcher was set down, and looking down into 
the open grave in which lay a brave lieutenant of his own regi- 
ment, declared, with grim fun, that he would not be "buried by 
that raw recruit," and ordered the men to "carry him back." 
This man, though fearfully wounded in the throat, actually lived 
and recovered. 

The government was now well equipped with stores and sup- 
plies, but Mrs. Holstein writes her testimony, with that of all 
others, to the most valuable supplementary aid of the Sanitary 



MRS. WILLIAM H. HOLSTEIN. 257 

and Christian Commissions^ in caring for the vast army of 
wounded and suffering upon this dreadful field. 

By the 7th of August all had been removed who were able 
to bear transportation, to other hospitals. Three thousand re- 
mained, who were placed in the United States General Hospital 
on York Turnpike. The Second Corps Hospital was merged in 
this, and Mrs. Holstein remained as its matron until its close, and 
was fully occupied until the removal of the hospital and the dedir 
cation of the National Cemetery. 

She 'then returned home, but after rest she was requested by 
the Sanitary Commission to commence a tour among the Aid 
Societies of the State, for the purpose of telling the ladies all that 
her experience had taught her of the soldier's needs, and the best 
way of preparing and forwarding clothing, delicacies and supplies 
of all kinds. She felt it impossible to be idle, and however disa- 
greeable this task, she would not shrink from it. The earnestness 
with which she was listened to, and the consciousness of the good 
to result from her labors, sustained her all through the arduous 
winter's work, during which she often met two or three audiences 
for an " hour and a half talk,'' in the course of the day. Her 
husband as usual accompanied her, and in the spring, with the 
commencement of Grant's campaign over the Rapidan, they both 
went forward as agents of the Sanitary Commission. 

Through all this dread campaign they worked devotedly. 
They could not rest to be appalled by its horrors. They could 
not think of the grandeur of its conceptions or the greatness of its 
victories^they could only work and wait for leisure to grasp the 
wonder of the passing events. As Mrs. Holstein herself says : 
" While living amidst so much excitement — in the times which 
form history — we were unconscious of it all — it was our daily 
life !" 

Of that long period, Mrs. Holstein records two grand ex- 
periences as conspicuous — the salute which followed the news of 

33 



258 

the completion of Sherman's " March to the Sea/' and the explo- 
sion of the mine at City Point. 

With the first, one battery followed another with continuous 
reverberation J till all the air was filled with the roar of artillery. 
The other was more awful. The explosion was fearful. The 
smoke rose in form like a gigantic umbrella, and from its midst 
radiated every kind of murderous missile — shells were thrown 
and burst in all directions, muskets and every kind of arms fell 
like a shower around. Comparatively few were killed — many of 
the men were providentially out of the way. Until the revela- 
tions upon the trial of Wirz, it was supposed to have been caused 
by an accident, but then men learned that it was part of a fiendish 
plot to destroy lives and Government property. 

The summer of 1864 was noted for its intense heat and dust, 
but Mr. and Mrs. Holstein remained with the army, absorbed in 
their work, till November, when Mr. Holstein's health again 
failed and they went home for rest. It was not thought prudent 
for them to return, and Mrs. Holstein, still accompanied by him, 
resumed her travels and spent some time in "talking" to the 
women and children of the State. She had the satisfaction of 
establishing several societies which worked vigorously during the 
remainder of the war. 

In January, 1865, they went to Annapolis to do what they 
could for the returned Andersonville prisoners, and to learn their 
actual condition and sufferings that Mrs. Holstein might have a 
better hold upon the minds of the people, to whom she talked. 
Let us give these brief allusions to her experiences here, in her 
own words. 

"All of horror I had seen, or known, throughout the war, 
faded into insignificance when contrasted with the results of this 
heinous sin — a systematic course of starvation of brave men, 
made captive by the chances of war. ^ ^ ^ My note-book 
is filled with fearful records of suffering, and hardships unpar- 
alleled, written just as I took the statements from the fleshless 



MRS. WILLIAM H. HOLSTEIN-. 259. 

lips of these living skeletons. In appearance they reminded nie 
more of the bodies I had seen washed out upon Antietam, and 
other battle-fields, than of anything else — only they had ceased to 
suffer and were at rest, — these were still living, breathing, help- 
less skeletons. 

' In treason's prison-hold 

Their martyred spirits grew 
To stature like the saints of old, 
While, amid agonies untold, 
They starved for me — and you.' 

" We remained at Annapolis from January to July, when, the 
war being closed, the men were mustered out of service. The 
few remaining were sent to Baltimore, and the hosj^itals were 
vacated and restored to their former uses. 

"Much of the summer was occupied in unfinished hospital 
work, and in looking after some special cases of great interest. 
The final close of the war brought with it, for the first time in 
all these long years, perfeet rest to overtasked mind and wearied 
body.'^ 



MRS. CORDELIA A. P. HARVEY. 




HE State of Wisconsin is justly proud of a name, which, 
while standing for what is noble and true in man, has 
received an added lustre in being made to express 
also, the sympathy, the goodness, and the power of 
woman. The death of the honored husband, and the public 
labors of the heroic wife, in the same cause — the great cause that 
has absorbed the attention and the resources of the country for 
four years — have given each to the other a peculiar and thrilling 
interest to every loyal American heart. 

It will be remembered that shortly after the battle of Shiloh, 
Governor Harvey proceeded to the front with supjjlies and medi- 
cal aid to assist in caring for the wounded among the soldiers 
from his State, after rendering great service in alleviating their 
sufferings by the aid and comfort he brought with him, and 
reviving their spirits by his presence. As he was about to em- 
bark at Savannah for home, in passing from one boat to another, 
he fell into the river and was drowned. This was on the 
19th of April, 1862, a day made memorable by some of the most 
important events in our country's history. Tavo days before he 
wrote to Mrs. Harvey the last sacred letter as follows: 

'•'Pittsburg Landing, April 17, 1862. 
"Dear Wife: — Yesterday was the day of my life. Thank God for the im- 
pulse that brought me here. I am well and have done more good by coming 
than T can well tell you. In haste, 

" Louis." 
260 




Eng "^ V ^•^--^^'-'^''^'^ " 



Mrs. CoRDELii\ A.P Hab^ e\ 



MES. CORDELIA A. P. HARVEY. 261 

With these words ringing in her ears as from be}'ond the tomb, 
the conviction forced itself upon her mind that the path of duty 
for her lay in the direction he had so faithfully pointed out. But 
for a while womanly feeling overcame all else, and she gave way 
beneath the shock of her affliction, coming so suddenly and taking 
away at once the pride, the hope, and the joy of life. For many 
weeks it seemed that the tie that bound her to the departed was 
stronger than that which held her to the earth, and her friends 
almost despaired of seeing her again herself. 

Hers was indeed a severe affliction. A husband, beloved and 
honored by all, without a stain upon his fair fame, with a bright 
future and hope of long life before him, had fallen — suddenly as 
by a bullet — at the front, where his great heart had led him to 
look after the wants of his own brave troops — fallen to be re- 
membered with the long list of heroes who have died that their 
country might live, and in making themselves immortal, have 
made a people great. Nor was this sacrifice without its fruit. 
It was this that put it into her heart to work for the soldiers, and 
from the grave of Harvey have sprung those flowers of Love 
and Mercy whose fragrance has filled the land. 

Looking back now, it is easy to see how much this bereave- 
ment had to do in fitting Mrs. Harvey for her work. It is the 
experience of sorroAV that prepares us to minister to others in 
distress. At home none could say they had given more for their 
country than she, few could feel a sorrow she had not known or 
with which she could not sympathize, out of something in her 
own experience. In the army, in camps and hospitals, who so 
fit to speak in the place of wife or mother to the sick and dying 
soldier, as she, in whom the tenderest feelings of the heart had 
been touched by the hand of Death ? 

With the intention of devoting herself to this work, she asked 
of the Governor permission to visit hospitals in the Western 
Department, as agent for the State, which was cordially granted, 



262 

and early in the autumn of 1862, set out for St. Louis to com- 
mence her new work. 

To a lady who had seen nothing of military life, of course, all 
was strange. The experiment she was making was one in which 
very many kind-hearted women have utterly failed— rushing to 
hospitals from the impulse of a tender sympathy, only to make 
themselves obnoxious to the surgeons by their impertinent zeal, 
and, by their inexperience and indiscretion, useless, and some- 
times detrimental, to the patients. With the wisdom that has 
marked her course throughout, she at once comprehended the 
delicacy of the situation, and was not long in perceiving what 
she could best do, and wherein she could accomplish the most 
good. The facility with which she brought, not only her own 
best powers, but the influence universally accorded to her posi- 
tion, to bear for the benefit of the suffering soldiers, is subject 
of remark and wonder among all who have witnessed her labors. 

At that time St. Louis was the theater of active military ope- 
rations, and the hospitals were crowded with sick and wounded 
fi'om the camps and battle-fields of Missouri and Tennessee. The 
army was not then composed of the hardy veterans whose prowess 
has since carried victory into every rebellious State, but of boys 
and young men unused to liardship, Avho, in the flush of enthu- 
siasm, had entered the army. Time had not then brought to its 
present perfection the work of the Medical Department, and but 
for the spontaneous generosity of the people in sending forward 
assistance and supplies for the sick and wounded, the army could 
scarcely have existed. Such was the condition of things when 
Mrs. Harvey commenced her work of mercy in visiting the hos- 
pitals of that city, filled with the victims of battle and disease. 
How from morning till niglit for many a weary week she waited 
by the cots of these poor fello^vs, attending to their little wants, 
and speaking words of cheer and comfort, those who knew her 
then all well remember. The work at once became delightful 
and profitable to lier, calling her mind away from its own sorroAvs 



MRS. CORDELIA A. P. HARVEY. 263 

to the physical suffering of those around her. In her eagerness 
to soothe their woes, she half forgot her own, and came to them 
always with a joyous smile and words of cheerful consolation. 
During her stay in St. Louis her home was at the hospitable 
mansion of George Partridge, Esq., an esteemed member of the 
Western Sanitary Commission, whose household seem to have 
vied with each other in attention and kindness to their guest. 

Hearing of great suffering at Cape Girardeau, she went there 
about the 1st of August, just as the First Wisconsin Cavalry 
were returning from their terrible expedition through the swamps 
of Arkansas. She had last seen them in all their pride and 
manly beauty, reviewed by her husband, the Governor, before 
they left their State. Now how changed ! The strongest, they 
that could stand, just tottering about, the very shadows of their 
former selves. The building taken as a temporary hospital, was 
filled to overflowing, and the surgeons were without hospital 
supplies, the men subsisting on the common army ration alone. 
The heat was oppressive, and the diseases of the most fearfully 
contagious character. The surgeons themselves were appalled, 
and the attendants shrank from the care of the sick and the 
removal of the dead. In one room she found a corpse which 
had evidently lain for many hours, the nurses fearing to go near 
and see if the man was dead. With her own hands she bound 
up the face, and emboldened by her coolness, the burial party 
were induced to coffin the body and remove it from the house. 
Here was a field for self-forgetfulness and heroic devotion to a 
holy cause; and here the light of woman's sympathy shone 
brightly when all else was fear and gloom. Patients dying with 
the noxious camp fever breathed into her ear their last messages 
to loved ones at home, as she passed from cot to cot, undaunted 
by the bolts of death which fell around her thick as on the 
battle-field. She set herself to work procuring furloughs for such 
as were able to travel, and discharges for the permanently dis- 
abled, to get them away from a place of death. To this end she 



264 

brought all the art of woman to work. Once convinced that the 
object she sought was just and right, she left no honorable means 
untried to secure it. Surgeons were flattered and coaxed, when- 
ever coaxing and flattering availed; or, failing in this, she knew 
when to administer a gentle threat, or an intimation that a report 
might go up to a higher of&cial. One resource failing she always 
had another, and never attempted anything without carrying 
it out. 

Mrs. Harvey relates many touching incidents of her experience 
at this place which want of space forbids us to repeat. One of her 
first acts was to telegraph Mr. Yeatman, President of the Western 
Sanitary Commission, at St. Louis, for hospital stores, and in two 
days, by his promptness and liberality, she received an abundant 
supply. 

After several weeks' stay at Cape Girardeau, during which time 
the condition of the hospital greatly improved, Mrs. Harvey 
continued her tour of visitation which was to embrace all the 
general hospitals on the Mississippi river, as well as the regimen- 
tal hospitals of the troops of her own State. Her face, cheerful 
with all the heart's burden of grief, gladdened every ward where 
lay a Union soldier, from Keokuk as far down as the sturdy 
legions of Grant had regained possession of the Father of Waters. 

At Memphis she was able to do great service in procuring fur- 
loughs for men who would else have died. Often has the writer 
heard brave men declare, with tearful eyes, their gratitude to her 
for favors of this kind. Many came to have a strange and 
almost superstitious reverence for a person exercising so power- 
ful an influence, and using it altogether for the good of the com- 
mon soldier. The estimate formed of her authority by some of 
the more ignorant class, often exhibited itself in an extremely 
ludicrous manner. She would sometimes receive letters from 
homesick men begging her to give them a furlough to visit their 
families ! and often, from deserters and others confined in military 



MRS. CORDELIA A. P. HARVEY. 265 

prisons, asking to be set at liberty, and promising faithful service 
thereafter ! 

The spring of 1863 found General Grant making his approaches 
upon the last formidable position held by the rebels on the Mis- 
sissippi. Young's Point, across the river from Yicksburg, the 
limit of uninterrupted navigation at that time, will be remem- 
bered by many as a place of great suffering to our brave boys. 
The high water covering the low lands on which they were 
encamped during the famous canal experiment, induced much 
sickness. Intent to be where her kind offices were most needed, 
Mrs. Harvey proceeded thither about the first of April. After a 
few weeks' labor, she, herself, overcome by the terrible miasma, 
was taken seriously ill, and was obliged to return homeward. 
Months of rest, and a visit to the sea-side, were required to bring 
back a measure of her wonted strength, and so for the summer 
her services w^ere lost to the army. 

But though for a while withheld from her chosen work, Mrs. 
Harvey never forgot the sick soldier. Her observation while 
with the army, convinced her of the necessity of establishing 
general hospitals in the Northern States, where soldiers suffering 
from diseases incurable in the South, might be sent with prospect of 
recovery. Her own personal experience deepened her conviction, 
and, although the plan found little favor then among high offi- 
cials, she at once gave her heart to its accomplishment. Although 
repeated effbrts had been made in vain to lead the Government 
into this policy, Mrs. Harvey determined to go to Washington 
and make her plea in person to the president. 

As the result of her interview with Mr. Lincoln, which was 
of the most cordial character, a General Hospital was granted to 
the State of Wisconsin ; and none who visit the city of Madison 
can fail to observe, with patriotic pride, the noble structure known 
as Harvey Hospital. As proof of the service it has done, and 
as fully verifying the arguments urged by Mrs. Harvey to secure 

34 



266 

its establishment^ the reader is referred to the reports of the sur- 
geon in charge of the hospital. 

Her mission at Washington accomplished, Mrs. Harvey returned 
immediately home, where she soon received official intelligence 
that the hospital would be located at Madison and be prepared for 
the reception of patients at the earliest possible moment. Upon 
this, she went immediately to Memphis, Tennessee, where she was 
informed by the medical director of the Sixteenth Army Corps, 
that there were over one hundred men in Fort Pickering (used 
as a Convalescent Camp) who had been vacillating between camp 
and hospital for a year, and who would surely die unless removed 
North. At his suggestion, she accompanied these sick men up 
the river, to get them, if possible, north of St. Louis. She 
landed at Cairo, and proceeded to St. Louis by rail, and, on the 
arrival of the transport, had transportation to Madison ready for 
the men. As they were needy, and had not been paid, she pro- 
cured of the Western Sanitary Commission a change of clothing 
for every one. Out of the whole number, only seven died, and 
only five were discharged. The remainder returned, strong and 
healthy, to the service. 

Returning South, she visited all points on the river down to 
ISTew Orleans, coming back to make her home for the time at 
Vicksburg, as the place nearest the centre of her field of labor. 
The Superintendent and Matrons of the Soldiers' Home extended 
to her a hearty welcome, happy to have their institution honored 
by her presence, and receive her sympathizing and kindly aid. 
So substantial was the reputation she had won among the army, 
that her presence alone, at a military post in the West, was a power 
for good. Officers and attendants in charge of hospitals knew 
liow quick she was to apprehend and bring to light any delin- 
quency in the performance of their duties, and profited by this 
knowledge to the mutual advantage of themselves and those 
thrown upon their care. 

During the summer of 1864, the garrison of Vicksburg suffered 



MES. CORDELIA A. P. HARVEY. 267 

much from diseases incident to the season in that latitude. Per- 
haps in no regiment was the mortality greater than in the Second 
Wisconsin Cavalry. Strong men sickened and died within a few 
days, and others lingered on for weeks, wasting by degrees, till 
only skin and bone were left. The survivors, in evidence of their 
appreciation of her sympathy and exertions for them in their 
need, presented her an elegant enameled gold watch, beautifully 
set with diamonds. The presentation was an occasion on which 
she could not well avoid a public appearance, and those who were 
present, must have wondered that one of such power in private 
conversation should have so little control, even of her own feel- 
ings, before an assembly. Mrs. Harvey has never distinguished 
herself as a public speaker. Resolute, impetuous, confident to a 
degree bordering on the imperious, with power of denunciation to 
equip an orator, she yet shrinks from the gaze of a multitude with 
a woman's modesty, and the humility of a child. She does not 
underestimate the worth of true womanhood by attempting to 
act a distinctively manly part. 

Although known as the agent of the State of Wisconsin, Mrs. 
Harvey has paid little regard to state lines, and has done a truly 
national work. Throughout the time of her stay with the army, 
applications for her aid came as often from the soldiers of other 
states as from those of her own, and no one was ever refused relief 
if to obtain it was in her power. Acting in the character of a 
friend to every Union soldier, from whatever state, she has had 
the entire confidence of the great Sanitary Commissions, and ren- 
dered to their agents invaluable aid in the distribution of goods. 
The success that has everywhere attended Mrs, Harvey's efforts, 
directly or indirectly, to benefit the soldier, has given to her life 
an unusual charm, and established for her a national reputation. 

In years to come, the war-scarred veteran will recount to list- 
ening children around the domestic hearth, along with many a 
thrilling deed of valor performed by his own right arm, the angel 
visits of this lady to his cot, when languishing with disease, or 



268 woisiak's work in the civil war. 

hoWj when ready to die, her intercessions secured him a furlough, 
and sent him home to feel the curative power of his native air 
and receive the care of loving hands and hearts. IN^ot a few un- 
fortunates will remember, if they do not tell, how her care reached 
them, not only in hospital but in prison as well, bringing clothing 
and comfort to them when shivering in their rags ; while others, 
again, will not be ashamed to relate, as we have heard them, with 
tears, their gratitude for release from unjust imprisonment, secured 
by her faithful exertions. 

The close of the war has brought Mrs. Harvey back to her 
home, and closed her work for the soldiers. Her attention now 
is turned in the direction of soothing the sorrows the war has 
caused among the households of her State. Many a soldier who 
has died for his country, has left his little ones to the charity of the 
world. Through her exertions the State of Wisconsin now has 
a Soldiers' Orphan Asylum, where all these children of our dead 
heroes shall be gathered in. By a visit to Washington she has 
recently obtained from the United States Government, the dona- 
tion of its interest in Harvey Hospital, and has turned it into an 
institution of this kind, and has set her hand and heart to the 
work of securing from the people a liberal endowment for it. 

Happy indeed has she been in her truly Christian work, begun 
in sadness and opening into the joy that crowns every good work. 
The benedictions of thousands of the brave and victorious rest 
upon her, and the purest spirits of the martyred ones have her in 
their gentle care! May America be blest with many more like 
her to teach us by example the nature and practice of a true 
Christian heroism. 



MRS. SARAH R. JOHNSTON 




UR northern women have won the highest meed of 
praise for their devotion and self-sacrifice in the cause 
of their country, but great as their labors and sacrifices 
have been, they are certainly inferior to those of some 
of the loyal women of the South, who for the love they bore to 
their country and its flag, braved all the contempt, obloquy and 
scorn which Southern women could heap upon them — who lived 
for years in utter isolation from the society of relatives, friends, 
and neighbors, because they would render such aid and succor as 
was in their power to the defenders of the national cause, in 
prison, in sorrow and in suffering. Often were the lives of those 
brave women in danger, and the calmness with which they met 
those who thirsted for their blood gave evidence of their position 
of a spirit as undaunted and lofty as any which ever faced the 
cannon's mouth or sought death in the high places of the field. 
Among these heroines none deserves a higher place in the records 
of womanly patriotism and courage than Mrs. Sarah R. John- 
ston. 

At the breakino; out of the war IMrs. Johnston was teachino^ a 
school at Salisbury, North Carolina, where she was born and 
always resided. When the first prisoners were brought into that 
place, the Southern women turned out in their carriages and with 
a band escorted them through the town, and when they filed past 
saluted them with contemptuous epithets. From that time Mrs. 
Johnston determined to devote liorself to the amelioration of the 

269 



270 

condition of the prisoners; and the testimony of thousands of the 
Union soldiers confined there proved how nobly she performed 
the duties she undertook. It was no easy task^ for she was 
entirely alone, being the only woman who openly advocated 
Union sentiments and attempted to administer to the wants of the 
prisoners. For fifteen months none of the women of Salisbury 
spoke to her or called upon her, and every possible indignity was 
heaped on her as a "Yankee sympathizer.^' Her scholars were 
withdrawn from her school, and it was broken up, and her means 
were very limited ; nevertheless, she accomplished more by syste- 
matic arrangements than many would have done with a large 
outlay of money. 

When the first exchange of prisoners was made, she went to 
the depot to arrange some pallets for some of the sick who were 
leaving, when she stumbled in the crowd, and looking down she 
found a young Federal soldier who had fainted and fallen, and 
was in danger of being trodden to death. She raised him up and 
called for water, but none of the people would get a drop to save 
a "Yankee's" life. Some of the soldiers who were in the cars 
threw their canteens to her, and she succeeded in reviving him; 
during this time the crowd heaped upon her every insulting epi- 
thet they could think of, and her life even was in danger. But 
she braved all, and succeeded in obtaining permission from 
Colonel Godwin, then in command of the post, who was a kind- 
hearted man, to let her remove him to her own house, promising 
to take care of him as if he were her own son, and if he died to 
give him Christian burial. He was in the last stages of con- 
sumption, and she felt sure he would die if taken to the prison 
hospital. None of the citizens of the place would even assist in 
carrying him, and after a time two gentlemen from Richmond 
stepped forward and helped convey him to her house. There 
she watched over him for hours, as he was in a terrible state from 
neglect, having had blisters applied to his chest which had never 
been dressed and were full of vermin. 



MRS. SARAH R. JOPINSTON. 271 

The poor boy, whose name was Hugh Beriy, from Ohio, only 
lived a few days, and she had a grave dug for him in her garden 
in the night, for burial had been refused in the public grave- 
yard, and she had been threatened that if she had him interred 
decently his body should be dug up and buried in the street. 
They even attempted to take his body from the house for that 
purpose, but she stood at her door, pistol in hand, and said to 
them that the first man who dared to cross her threshold for such 
a purpose should be shot like a dog. They did not attempt it, 
and she performed her promise to the letter. 

During the first two years she was enabled to do a great many 
acts of kindness for the prisoners, but after that time she was 
watched very closely as a Yankee sympathizer, and the rules of 
the prison were stricter, and what she could do was done by 
strategy. 

Her means were now much reduced, but she still continued in 
her good work, cutting up her carpets and spare blankets to 
make into moccasins, and when new squads of prisoners arrived, 
supplied them with bread and water as they halted in front of 
her house, which they were compelled to do for hours, waiting 
the routine of being mustered into the prison. They were not 
allowed to leave their ranks, and she would turn an old-fashioned 
windlass herself for hours, raising water from her well ; for the 
prisoners were often twenty-four to forty-eight hours on the rail- 
road without rations or water. 

Generally the officer in command would grant her request, but 
once a sergeant told her, in reply, if she gave any of them a drop 
of water or a piece of bread, or dared to come outside her gate for 
that purpose, he would pin her to the earth with his bayonet. 
She defied him, and taking her pail of water in one hand, and a 
l)asket of bread in the other, she walked directly past him on her 
errand of mercy; he followed her, placing his bayonet between 
her shoulders, just so that she could feel the cold steel. She 
turned and coolly asked him why he did not pin her to the earth, 



272 woiman's work in the civil war. 

as he had threatened to do^ but got no reply. Then some of 
the rebels said, ^^ Sergeant, you can't make anything on that 
woman, you had better let her alone,'' and she performed her 
work unmolested. 

Not content with these labors, she visited the burial-place 
where the deceased Union prisoners of that loathsome prison-pen 
at Salisbury were buried, and transcribed with a loving fidelity 
every inscription which could be found there, to let the sorrow- 
ing friends of those martyrs to their country know where their 
beloved ones are laid. The number of these marked graves is 
small, only thirty-one in all, for the greater part of the four or 
five thousand dead starved and tortured there till they relin- 
quished their feeble hold on life, were buried in trenches four or 
five deep, and no record of their place of burial was permitted. 
Mrs. Johnston also copied from the rebel registers at Salisbury 
after the place was captured the statistics of the Union prisoners, 
admitted, died, and remaining on hand in each month from 
October, 1864, to April, 1865. The aggregates in these six 
months were four thousand and fifty-four admitted, of whom two 
thousand three hundred and ninety-seven died, and one thousand 
six hundred and fifty-seven remained. 

Mrs. Johnston came I^orth in the summer of 1865, to visit her 
daughter, who had been placed at a school in Connecticut by the 
kindness of some of the officers she had befriended in prison; 
transportation having been given her by Generals Schofield and 
Carter, who testified to the services she had rendered our pri- 
soners, and that she was entitled to the gratitude of the Govern- 
ment and all loyal citizens. 




Miss Ei\i i ly E . Pak sons 



EMILY E. PARSONS 




MONG the honorable and heroic women of New Eng- 
land whose hearts were immediately enlisted in the causes 
of their country, in its recent struggle against the rebel- 
lion of the slave States, and who prepared themselves to 
do useful service in the hospitals as nurses, was Miss Emily E. Par- 
sons, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, a daughter of Professor The- 
ophilus Parsons, of the Cambridge Law School, and granddaugh- 
ter of the late Chief Justice Parsons, of Massachusetts. 

Miss Parsons was born in Taunton, Massachusetts, was educated 
in Boston, and resided at Cambridge at the beginning of the war. 
She at once foresaw that there would be need of the same heroic 
work on the part of the women of the country as that performed 
by Florence l^ightingale and her army of women nurses in the 
Crimea, and with her father's approval she consulted with Dr. 
Wyman, of Cambridge, how she could acquire the necessary 
instruction and training to perform the duties of a skilful nurse 
in the hospitals. Through his influence with Dr. Shaw, the 
superintendent of the Massachusetts General Hospital, she was 
received into that institution as a pupil in the work of caring for 
the sick, in the dressing of wounds, in the preparation of diet for 
invalids, and in all that pertains to a well regulated hospital. 
She was thoroughly and carefully instructed by the surgeons of 
the hospital, all of whom took great interest in fitting her for the 
important duties she proposed to undertake, and gave her every 
opportunity to practice, with her own hands, the labors of a good 

3s> 273 



274 WOMA^-'S WORK IX THE j^IVIL WAR. 

hospital nurse. Dr. Warren and Dr. Townshend^ two distin- 
guished surgeons, took special pains to give her all necessary 
information and the most thorough instruction. At the end of 
one year and a half of combined teaching and practice, she was 
recommended by Dr. Townshend to Fort Schuyler Hospital, on 
Long Island Sound, where she went in October, 1862, and for 
two months performed the duties of hospital nurse, in the most 
faithful and satisfactory manner, when she left by her father's 
wishes, on account of the too great exposure to the sea, and went 
to New York. 

While in New York Miss Parsons wrote to Miss Dix, the 
agent of the Government for the employment of women nurses, 
j offering her services wherever they might be needed, and received 
an answer full of encouragement and sympathy with her wishes. 
At the same time she also made the acquaintance of Mrs. John C. 
Fremont, who wrote to the Western Sanitary Commission at St. 
Louis, of her qualifications and desire of usefulness in the hos- 
pital service, and she was immediately telegraphed to come on at 
once to St. Louis. 

At this time, January, 1863, every available building in St. 
Louis was converted into a hospital, and the sick and wounded 
were brought from Vicksburg, and Arkansas Post, and Helena 
up the river to be cared for at St. Louis and other military posts. 
At Memphis and Mound City, (near Cairo) at Quincy, Illinois, 
and the cities on the Ohio River, the hospitals were in equally 
crowded condition. Miss Parsons went immediately to St. Louis 
and was assigned by Mr. James E. Yeatman, (the President of 
the Western Sanitary Commission, and agent for Miss Dix), to 
the Lawson Hospital. In a few weeks, however, she was needed 
for a still more important service, and was placed as head nurse 
on the hospital steamer ^^City of Alton," Surgeon Turner in 
charge. A large supply of sanitary stores were entrusted to her 
care by the Western Sanitary Commission, and the steamer pro- 
ceeded to Yicksburg, where she Avas loaded with about four 



EMII.Y E. PARSONS. 275 

hundred invalid soldiers, many of them sick past recovery, and 
returned as far as Memphis. On this trip the strength and 
endurance of Miss Parsons were tried to the utmost, and the min- 
istrations of herself and her associates to the poor, helpless and 
suffering men, several of whom died on the passage up the river, 
were constant and unremitting. At Memphis, after transferring 
the sick to the hospitals, an order was received from General 
Grant to load the boat with troops and return immediately to 
Vicksburg, an order prompted by some military exigency, and 
Miss Parsons and the other female nurses were obliged to return 
to St. Louis. 

For a few weeks after her return she suffered from an attack 
of malarious fever, and on her recovery was assigned to duty as 
superintendent of female nurses at the Benton Barracks Hospital, 
the largest of all the hospitals in St. Louis, built out of the am- 
phitheatre and other buildings in the fair grounds of the St. Louis 
Agricultural Society, and placed in charge of Surgeon Ira Russell, 
an excellent physician from Natick, Mass. In this large hospital 
there were often two thousand patients, and besides the male 
nurses detailed from the army, the corps of female nurses con- 
sisted of one to each of the fifteen or twenty wards, whose duty it 
was to attend to the special diet of the feebler patients, to see that 
the wards were kept in order, the beds properly made, the dressing 
of wounds properly done, to minister to the wants of the patients, 
and to give them words of good cheer, both by reading and con- 
versation — softening the rougher treatment and manners of the 
male nurses, by their presence, and performing the more delicate 
offices of kindness that are natural to woman. 

In this important and useful service these women nurses, many 
of them having but little experience, needed one of their own 
number of superior knowledge, judgment and experience, to super- 
vise their work, counsel and advise with them, instruct them in 
their duties, secure obedience to every necessary regulation, and 
good order in the general administration of this important brancli 



276 

of hospital service. For this position Miss Parsons was most 
admirably fitted, and discharged its duties with great fidelity and 
success fi^r many months, as long as Dr. Russell continued in 
charge of the hospital. The whole work of female nursing was 
reduced to a perfect system, and the nurses under Miss Parsons' 
influence became a sisterhood of noble women, performing a great 
and loving service to the maimed and suffering defenders of their 
country. In the organization of this system and the framing of 
wise rules for carrying it into effect Dr. Russell and Mr. Yeat- 
man lent their counsel and assistance, and Dr. Russell, as the 
chief surgeon, entertained those enlightened and liberal views 
which gave the system a full chance to accomplish the best results. 
Under his administration, and Miss Parsons' superintendence of 
the nursing, the Benton Barracks Hospital became famous for its 
excellence, and for the rapid recovery of the patients. 

It was not often that the army surgeons could be induced to 
give so fair a trial to female nursing in the hospitals. Too often 
they allowed their prejudices to interfere, and used their author- 
ity to thwart instead of aid the best plans for making the services 
of women all that was needed in the hospitals. But in the case of 
Dr. Russell, enlightened judgment and humane sympathies com- 
bined to make him friendly to the highest exertions of woman, in 
this holy service of humanity. And the result entirely justified 
the most sanguine expectations. 

Having served six months in this capacity, Miss Parsons went 
to her home at Cambridge, on a furlough from the Sanitary Com- 
mission, to recruit her health. After a short period of rest she 
returned to St. Louis and resumed her position at Benton Bar- 
racks, in which she continued till August, 1864, when in conse- 
quence of illness, caused by malaria, she returned to her home in 
Cambridge a second time. On her recovery she concluded to 
enter upon the same work in the eastern department, but the 
return of peace, and the disbanding of a large portion of the army 
rendered her services in the hospitals no longer necessary. 



EMILY E. PARSONS. 277 

From this time she devoted herself at home to working foi the 
freedmen and refugees, collecting clothing and garden seeds for 
them, many boxes of which she shipped to the Western Sanitary 
Commission, at St. Louis, to be distributed in the Mississippi 
Valley, where they were greatly needed, and were received as a 
blessing from the Lord by the poor refugees and freedmen, who 
in many instances were without the means to help themselves, or 
to buy seed for the next year's planting. 

In the spring of 1865, she took a great interest in the Sanitary 
Fair held at Chicago, collected many valuable gifts for it, and 
was sent for by the Committee of Arrangements to go out as one 
of the managers of the department furnished by the New Jeru- 
salem Church — the different churches having separate depart- 
ments in the Fair. This duty she fulfilled, with great pleasure 
and success, and the general results of the Fair were all that 
could be desired. 

Returning home from the Chicago Fair, and the war being 
ended, Miss Parsons conceived a plan of establishing in hei own 
city of Cambridge, a Charity Hospital for poor women and chil- 
dren. For this most praiseworthy object she has already collected 
a portion of the necessary funds, which she has placed in the 
hand of a gentleman who consents to act as Treasurer, and is 
entirely confident of the ultimate success of her enterprise. There 
is no doubt but that she possesses the character, good judgment. 
Christian motive and perseverance to carry it through, and she 
has the encouragement, sympathies and prayers of many friends 
to sustain her in the noble endeavor. 

In concluding this sketch of the labors of Miss Parsons in the 
care and nursing of our sick and wounded soldiers, and in the 
Sanitary and other benevolent enterprises called forth by the war, 
it is but just to say that in every position she occupied she per- 
formed her part with judgment and fidelity, and always brought 
to her work a spirit animated by the highest motives, and 
strengthened by communion with the Infinite Spirit, from whom 



278 

all love and wisdom come to aid and bless the children of men. 
Everywhere she went among the sick and suffering she brought 
the sunshine of a cheerful and loving heart, beaming from a 
countenance expressive of kindness, and good will and sympathy 
to all. Her presence in the hospital was always a blessing, and 
cheered and comforted many a despondent heart, and compensated 
in some degree, for the absence of the loved ones at home. Her 
gentle ministrations so faithful and cheering, might well have 
received the reverent worship bestowed on the shadow of Florence 
Nightingale, so admirably described by Longfellow in his Saint 
Filomena : 

" And slow, as in a dream of bliss 
The speechless suflerer turned to kiss 
Her shadow as it falls 
Upon the darkening walls." 



MRS. ALMIRA FALES 



H 



RS. FALES, it is believed, was the first woman in 
America wIk) performed any work directly tending to 
the aid and comfort of the soldiers of the nation in the 
late war. In truth, her labors commenced before any 
overt acts of hostility had taken place, even so long before as 
December, 1860. Hostility enough there undoubtedly was in 
feeling, but the fires of secession as yet only smouldered, not 
bursting into the lurid flames of war until the following spring. 

Yet Mrs. Fales, from her home in Washington, was a keen 
observer of the '^ signs of the times," and read aright the portents 
of rebellion. In her position, unobserved herself, she saw and 
heard much, which probably would have remained unseen and 
unheard by loyal eyes and ears, had the haughty conspirators 
against the nation's life dreamed of any danger arising from the 
knowledge of their projects, obtained by this humble woman. 

So keen was the prescience founded on these things that, as has 
been said, she, as early as December, 1860, scarcely a month after 
the election of Abraham Lincoln, gave a pretext for secession 
which its leaders were eager to avail themselves of, '^ began to 
prepare lint and hospital stores for the soldiers of the Union, not 
one of whom had then been called to take up arms." 

Of course, she was derided for this act. Inured to peace, seem- 
ingly more eager for the opening of ncAV territory, the spread of 
commerce, the gain of wealth and power than even for the highest 
national honor, the North would not believe in tlie possibility of 

279 



280 woman's avork in the civii war. 

war until the boom of the guns of Sumter, reverberating from 
the waves of the broad Atlantic, and waking the echoes all along 
its shores, burst upon their ears to tell in awful tones that it had 
indeed commenced. 

But there was one — a woman in humble life, yet of wonderful 
benevolence, of indomitable energy, unflagging perseverance, and 
unwavering purpose, who foresaw its inevitable coming and was 
prepared for it. 

Almira Fales was no longer young. She had spent a life in 
doing good, and was ready to commence another. Her husband 
had employment under the government in some department of 
the civil service, her sons entered the army, and she, too, — a 
soldier, in one sense, as truly as they — since she helped and 
cheered on the fight. 

From that December day that commenced the work, until long 
after the war closed, she gave herself to it, heart and soul — mind 
and body. No one, perhaps, can tell her story of work and hard- 
ship in detail, not even herself, for she acts rather than talks or 
writes. "Such women, always doing, never think of pausing to 
tell their own stories, which, indeed, can never be told ; yet the 
hint of them can be given, to stir in the hearts of other women 
a purer emulation, and to prove to them that the surest way to 
happiness is to serve others and forget yourself." 

In detail we have only this brief record of what she has done, 
yet what volumes it contains, what a history of labor and of self- 
sacrifice ! 

'^ After a life spent in benevolence, it was in December, 1860, 
that Almira Fales began to prepare lint and hospital stores for 
the soldiers of the Union, not one of whom had then been called 
to take up arms. People laughed, of course; thought it a ^ freak;' 
said that none of these things would ever be needed. Just as the 
venerable Dr. Mott said, at the women's meeting in Cooper Insti- 
tute, after Sumter had been fired : ^ Go on, ladies ! Get your lint 
ready, if it will do your dear hearts any good, though I don't 



MRS. ALMIRA FALES. 281 

believe myself that it will ever be needed/ Since that Dt.cember 
Mrs. Tales has emptied over seven thousand boxes of hospital 
stores^ and distributed with her own hands over one hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars worth of comforts to sick and wounded 
soldiers. Besides, she supplied personally between sixty and 
seventy forts with reading matter. She was months at sea — the 
only woman on hospital ships nursing the wounded and dying 
men. She was at Corinth^ and at Pittsburg Landing, serving our 
men in storm and darkness. She was at Fair Oaks. She was 
under fire through the seven days' fight on the Peninsula, with 
almost breaking heart ministering on those bloody fields to ' the 
saddest creatures that she ever saw.' 

"Through all those years, every day, she gave her life, her 
strength, her nursing, her mother-love to our soldiers. For her 
to be a soldier's nurse meant something very different from wear- 
ing a white apron, a white cap, sitting by a moaning soldier's bed, 
looking pretty. It meant days and nights of untiring toil; it 
meant the lovf liest office, the most menial service ; it meant the 
renouncing of all personal comfort, the sharing of her last pos- 
session with the soldier of her country; it meant patience, and 
watching, and unalterable love. A mother, every boy who fought 
for his country was her boy ; and if she had nursed him in infancy, 
she could not have cared for him with a tenderer care. Journey 
after journey this woman has performed to every part of the land, 
carrying with her some wounded, convalescing soldier, bearing 
him to some strange cottage that she never saw before, to the pale, 
weeping woman within, saying to her with smiling face, ^I have 
brought back your boy. Wipe your eyes, and take care of him.' 
Then, with a fantastic motion, tripping away as if she were not 
tired at all, and had done nothing more than run across the street. 
Thousands of heroes on earth and in heaven gratefully remember 
this woman's loving care to them in the extremity of anguish. 
The war ended, her work does not cease. Every day you may 

find her, with her heavily-laden basket, in hovels of white and 
36 



282 

black, which dainty and delicate ladies would not dare to enter. 
No wounds are so loathsome, no disease so contagious, no human 
being so abject, that she shrinks from contact, if she can minister 
to their necessity." 

During the Peninsular campaign Mrs. Fales was engaged on 
board the Hospital Transports, during most of the trying season 
of 1862. She w^as at Harrison's Landing in care of the wounded 
and wearied men worn down by the incessant battles and hard 
marches which attended the '^change of base" from the Chicka- 
hominy to the James. She spent a considerable time in the 
hospitals at Fortress Monroe; and was active in her ministra- 
tions upon the fields in the battles of Centreville, Chantilly, and 
the second battle of Bull Run, indeed most of those of Pope's 
campaign in Virginia in the autumn of 1862. 

At the battle of Chancellorsville, or rather at the assault upon 
Marye's Heights, in that fierce assault of Sedgwick's gallant 
Sixth Corps on the works which had on the preceding December 
defied the repeated charges of Burnside's best troops, Mrs. Fales 
lost a son. About one-third of the attacking force were killed 
or badly wounded in the assault, and among the rest the son of 
this devoted mother, who at that very hour might have been 
ministering to the wounded and dying son of some other mother. 
This loss was to her but a stimulus to further efforts and sacrifices. 
She mourned as deeply as any mother, but not as selfishly, as 
some might have done. In this, as in all her ways of life, she 
but carried out its ruling principle which was self-devotion, and 
deeds not words. 

Mrs. Fales may not, perhaps, be held up as an example of 
harmonious development, but she has surely shown herself great 
in self-forgetfulness and heroic devotion to the cause of her 
country. In person she is tall, plain in dress, and with few of 
the fashionable and stereotyped graces of manner. No longer 
young, her face still bears ample traces of former beauty, and her 



MES. ALMIRA FALES. 283 

large blue eyes still beam with the clear brightness of youth. 
But her hands tell the story of hardship and sacrifice. 

'^Poor hands! darkened and hardened by work, they never 
shirked any task, never turned from any drudgery, that could 
lighten the load of another. Dear hands! how many blood- 
stained faces they have washed, how many wounds they have 
bound up, how many eyes they have closed in dying, how many 
bodies they have sadly yielded to the darkness of death !'' 

She is full of a quaint humor, and in all her visits to hospitals 
her aim seemed to be to awake smiles, and arouse the cheerful- 
ness of the patients; and she was generally successful in this, 
being everywhere a great favorite. One more quotation from the 
written testimony of a lady who knew her well and we have 
done. 

"An electric temperament, a nervous organization, with a brain 
crowded with a variety of memories and incidents that could only 
come to one in a million — all combine to give her a pleasant 
abruptness of motion and of speech, which I have heard some 
very fine ladies term insanity. ^Now don't you think she is 
crazy, to spend all her time in such ways?' said one. When we 
remember how rare a thing utter unselfishness and self-forgetful- 
ness is, we must conclude that she is crazy. If the listless and 
idle lives which we live ourselves are perfectly sane, then Almira 
Tales must be the maddest of mortals. But would it not be 
better for the world, and for us all, if we were each of us a little 
crazier in the same direction?'' 



MISS CORNELIA HANCOCK 




ri MONG the most zealous and untiring of the women 
/^\o! ^^^^ ministered to the wounded men "at the front/^ 
in the long and terrible campaign of the Army of the 
Potomac in 1864—5^ was Miss Cornelia Hancock, of 
Philadelphia. Of this lady's early history or her previous labors 
in the war, we have been unable to obtain any very satisfactory 
information. She had, we are told, been active in the United 
States General Hospitals in Philadelphia, and had there learned 
what wounded men need in the way of food and attention. She 
had also rendered efficient services at Gettysburg. Of her work 
among the wounded men at Belle Plain and Fredericksburg, Mr. 
John Yassar, one of the most efficient agents of the Christian 
Commission, writes as follows : 

" Miss Cornelia Hancock was the first lady who arrived at 
Fredericksburg to aid in the care of the wounded. As one of the 
many interesting episodes of the war, it has seemed that her good 
deeds should not be unheralded. She was also among the very 
first to arrive at Gettysburg after the fearful struggle, and for days 
and weeks ministered unceasingly to the suffering. During the 
past winter she remained constantly with the army in winter 
quarters, connecting herself with the Second Division of the 
Second Corps. So attached were the soldiers, and so grateful for 
her ministration in sickness, that they built a house for her, in 
which she remained until the general order for all to leave was 
given. 

284 



MISS CORNELIA HANCOCK. 285 

"When the news of Grant's battles reached the North, Miss 
Hancock left Philadelphia at once for Washington. Several ap- 
plications were made by Members of Congress at the War Depart- 
ment for a permit for her to go to the wounded. It was each time 
declined, as being unfeasible and improper. With a woman's tact, 
she made application to go with one of the surgeons then arriving, 
as assistant, as each surgeon was entitled to one. The plan suc- 
ceeded, and I well remember the mental ejaculation made when I 
saw her at such a time on the boat. I lost sight of her at Belle 
Plain, and had almost forgotten the circumstance, when, shortly 
before our arrival at Fredericksburg, she passed in an ambulance. 
On being assigned to a hospital of the Second Corps, I found she 
had preceded me, and was earnestly at work. It was no fictitious 
effort, but she had already prepared soup and farina, and was 
dispensing it to the crowds of poor fellows lying thickly about. 

"All day she worked, paying little attention to others, only assi- 
duous in her sphere. When, the next morning, I opened a new 
hospital at the Methodist Church, I invited her to accompany me ; 
she did so; and if success and amelioration of suffering attended 
the effort, it was in no small degree owing to her indefatigable 
labors. Within an hour from the time one hundred and twenty 
had been placed in the building, she had seen that good beef soup 
and coffee was administered to each, and during the period I was 
there, no delicacy or nutriment attainable was wanting to the 
men. 

" Were any dying, she sat by to soothe their last moments, to 
receive the dying message to friends at home, and when it was 
over to convey by letter the sad intelligence. Let me rise ever so 
early, she had already preceded me at work, and during the many 
long hours of the day, she never seemed to weary or flag ; in the 
evening, when all in her own hospital had been fully cared for, 
she would go about the town with delicacies to administer to 
officers who were so situated they could not procure them. At 
night she sought a garret (and it was literally one) for her rest. 



286 

^^ One can but feebly portray the ministrations of such a person. 
She belonged to no association — had no compensation. She com- 
manded respect, for she was lady-like and well educated ; so quiet 
and undemonstrative, that her presence was hardly noticed, except 
by the smiling faces of the wounded as she passed. While she 
supervised the cooking of the meats and soups and coffee, all nice 
things were made and distributed by herself. How the men 
watched for the dessert of farina and condensed milk, and those 
more severely wounded for the draughts of milk punch ! 

" Often would she make visits to the offices of the Sanitary and 
Christian Commissions, and when delicacies arrived, her men 
were among the first to taste them. Oranges, lemons, pickles, soft 
bread and butter, and even apple-sauce, were one or the other daily 
distributed. Such unwearied attention is the more appreciated, 
when one remembers the number of females who subsequently 
arrived, and the desultory and fitful labor performed. Passing 
from one hospital to another, and bestowing general sympathy, 
with small works, is not Avhat wounded men want. It was very 
soon perceptible how the men in that hospital appreciated the 
solid worth of the one and the tinsel of the other. 

" This imperfect recognition is but a slight testimonial to the 
lady-like deportment and the untiring labors in beha f of sick 
and wounded soldiers of Miss Hancock.^^ 




^'V by J„7,„ Sort 



,1K3 , IvTar-y" ;>/Iopj?js Husband. 



MRS MARY MORRIS HUSBAND. 




HERE are some noble souls whose devotion to duty, to 
the welfai^ of the suffering and sorrowing, and to the 
work which God has set before them, is so complete 
that it leaves them no time to think of themselves, and 
no consciousness that what they have done or are doing, is in any 
way remarkable. To them it seems the most natural thing in the 
world to undergo severe hardships and privations, to suffer the 
want of all things, to peril health and even life itself, to endure 
the most intense fatigue and loss of rest, if by so doing they may 
relieve another's pain or soothe the burdened and aching heart; 
and with the utmost ingenuousness, they will avow that they have 
done nothing worthy of mention; that it is the poor soldier who 
has been the sufferer, and has made the only sacrifices worthy of 
the name. 

The worthy and excellent lady who is the subject of this sketch, 
is one of the representative women of tliis class. Few, if any, 
have passed through more positive hardships to serve the soldiers 
tlmn she ; but few have as little consciousness of them. 

Mrs. Mary Morris Husband, is a granddaughter of Robert 
Morris, the great financier of our Revolutionary War, to whose 
abilities and patriotism it was owing that we had a republic at 
all. She is, in her earnest patriotism, well worthy of her ancestry. 
Her husband, a well-known and highly respectable member of 
the Philadelphia bar, her two sons and herself constituted her 
household at the commencement of the war, and her quiet home 

287 



288 

in the Quaker City, was one of the pleasantest of the many de- 
lightful homes in that city. The patriotic instincts were strong 
in the family ; the two sons enlisted in the army at the very be- 
ginning of the conflict, one of them leaving his medical studies to 
do so; and the mother, as soon as there was any hospital work to 
do was fully prepared to take her part in it. She had been in 
poor health for some years, but in her anxiety to render aid 
to the suffering, her own ailings were forgotten. She was an 
admirable nurse and a skilful housewife and cook, and her first 
efforts for the sick and wounded soldiers in Philadelphia, were 
directed to the preparation of suitable and palatable food for 
them, and the rendering of those attentions which should relieve 
the irksomeness and discomforts of sickness in a hospital. The 
hospital on Twenty-second and Wood streets, Philadelphia, was 
the principal scene of these labors. 

But the time had come for other and more engrossing labors 
for the sick and wounded, and she was to be inducted into them 
by the avenue of personal anxiety for one of he" sons. In that 
fearful ^'change of base" which resulted in the seven days^ battle 
on the peninsula, when from the combined influence of marsh 
malaria, want of food, overmarching, the heat and fatigue of 
constant fighting, and the depression of spirits incident to the un- 
expected retreat, more of our men fell down with raortal sickness 
than were slain or wounded in the battles, one of Mrs. Husband's 
sons was among the sufferers from disease, and word was sent to 
her that he was at the point of death. She hastened to nurse 
him, and after a great struggle and frequent relapses, he rallied 
and began to recover. Meantime she had not been so wholly 
engrossed with her care for him as to be neo^lectful of the hundreds 
and thousands around, who, like him, were suffering from the 
deadly influences of that pestilential climate and soil, or of the 
wounded who were wearing out their lives in agony, with but 
scant attention or care ; and every moment that could be spared 
from her sick boy, was given to the other sufferers around her. 



MES. MAEY MORELS HUSBAXD. 289 

It was in this period of her work that she rendered the service 
to a young soldier, now a physician of Brooklyn, New York, so 
graphically described in the following extract from a letter ad- 
dressed to the writer of this sketch : 

" I was prostrated by a severe attack of camp dysentery, stag- 
nant water and ^mctuous bean soup not being exactly the diet for 
a sick person to thrive on. I got ^^no better" very rapidly, 
till at length, one afternoon, I lay in a kind of stupor, conscious 
that I was somewhere, though where, for the life of me I could not 
say. As I lay in this state, I imagined I heard my name spoken, 
and opening my eyes with considerable effort, I saw bending over 
me a female form. I think the astonishment restored me to per- 
fect consciousness (though some liquor poured into my mouth at 
the same time, may have been a useful adjunct). As soon as I 
could collect myself sufficiently, I discovered the lady to be a Mrs. 
Husband, who, with a few other ladies, had just arrived on one 
of the hospital boats. Having lost my own mother when a mere 
child, you may imagine the effect her tender nursing had upon 
me, and when sh^; laid her hand upon my forehead, all pain 
seemed to depart. I sank into a sweet sleep, and awoke the next 
morning refreshed and strengthened in mind and in body. From 
that moment my recovery was rapid, and in ten days I returned 
to my duty.'^ x, 

As her son began to recover, she resolved, in her thankfulness 
for this mercy, to - devote herself to the care of the sick and 
wounded of the arn ^ . She was on one of the hospital transports 
off Harrison's Landing, when the rebels bombarded it, and though 
it was her first experience " under fire,'' she stood her ground like 
a veteran, manifesting no trepidation, but pursuing her work of 
caring for the sick as calmly as if in perfect safety. Finding that 
she was desirous of rendering assistance in the care of the disabled 
soldiers, she was assigned, we believe, by the Sanitary Commission, 
to the position of Lady Superintendent of one of the hospital trans- 
ports which bore the wounded and sick to New York. She made 

37 



290 woman's work in the civil war. 

four trips on these vessels, and her faithful attention to the sick, her 
skilful nursing, and her entire forgetfulness of self, won for her 
the hearty esteem and regard of all on board. The troops being 
all transferred to Acquia Creek and Alexandria, Mrs. Husband 
went to Washington, and endeavored to obtain a pass and trans- 
portation for supplies to Pope's army, then falling back, foot by 
foot, in stern but unavailing resistance to Lee's strong and tri- 
umphant force. These she was denied, but Miss Dix requested 
her to take charge temporarily of the Camden Street Hospital, 
at Baltimore, the matron of which had been stricken down with 
illness. After a few weeks' stay here, she relinquished her posi- 
tion, and repaired to Antietam, where the smoke of the great 
battle was just rolling off over the heights of South Mountain. 
Here, at the Smoketown Hospital, where the wounded from 
French's and some other divisions were gathered, she found 
abundant employment, and at the request of that able surgeon 
and excellent man. Dr. Vanderkieft, she remained in charge two 
months. Mrs. Harris was with her here for a short time, and 
Miss Maria M. C. Hall, during her entire stay. Her presence at 
this hospital brought j)erpetual sunshine. Arduous as were her 
labors, for there were very many desperately wounded, and quite 
as many dangerously sick, she never manifested weariness or im- 
patience, and even the sick and wounded men, usually exacting, 
because forgetful of the great amount of labor which their condi- 
tion imposes upon the nurses, wondered that she never manifested 
fatigue, and that she was able to accomplish so much as she did. 
Often did they express their anxiety lest she should be compelled 
from weariness and illness to leave them, but her smiling, cheerful 
face reassured them. She and Miss Hall occupied for themselves 
and their stores, a double hospital tent, and let the weather be 
what it might, she was always at her post in the hospitals promptly 
at her hours, and dispensed with a liberal hand to those who 
needed, the delicacies, the stimulants, and medicines they required. 
She had made a flag for her tent by sewing upon a breadth of 



MRS. MARY MORRIS HUSBAND. 291 

calico a figure of a bottle cut out of red flannel^ and the bottle- 
flag flew to the wind at all times, indicative of the medicines which 
were dispensed from the tent below. We have endeavored to give 
a view of this tent, from which came daily such quantities of deli- 
cacies, such excellent milk-punch to nourish and support the 
patients whose condition was most critical, such finely flavored 
flaxseed tea for the army of patients suffering from pulmonic dis- 
eases {" her flaxseed tea,^^ says one of her boys, " was never insipid"), 
lemonades for the feverish, and something for every needy patient. 
See her as she comes out of her tent for her round of hospital 
duties, a substantial comely figure, with a most benevolent and 
motherly face, her hands filled with the good things she is bearing 
to some of the sufferers in the hospital ; she has discarded hoops, 
believing with Florence Nightingale, that they are utterly incom- 
patible with the duties of the hospital ; she has a stout serviceable 
apron nearly covering her dress, and that apron is a miracle of 
pockets ; pockets before, behind, and on each side ; deep, wide 
pockets, all stored full of something which will benefit or amuse 
her " boys f an apple, an orange, an interesting book, a set of 
chess-men, checkers, dominoes, or puzzles, newspapers, magazines, 
everything desired, comes out of those capacious pockets. As 
she enters a ward, the whisper passes from one cot to another, 
that ^^ mother" is coming, and faces, weary Avith pain, brighten at 
her approach, and sad hearts grow glad as she gives a cheerful 
smile to one, says a kind word to another, administers a glass of 
her punch or lemonade to a third, hands out an apple or an 
orange to a fourth, or a book or game to a fifth, and relieves the 
hospital of the gloom which seemed brooding over it. But not in 
these ways alone does she bring comfort and happiness to these 
poor wounded and fever-stricken men. She encourages them to 
confide to her their sorrows and troubles, and the heart that, like 
the caged bird, has been bruising itself against the bars of its cage, 
from grief for the suffering or sorrow of the loved ones at home 
or oftener still, the soul that finds itself on the conAnes of an un- 



292 woman's work in the civil war. 

known hereafter, and is filled with distress at the thought of the 
world to come, pours into her attentive ear, the story of its sor- 
rows, and finds in her a wise and kind counsellor and friend, and 
learns from her gentle teachings to trust and hope. 

Hers was a truly heroic spirit. Darkness, storm, or contagion, 
had no terrors for her, when there was suffering to be alleviated, 
or anguish to be soothed. Amid the raging storms of the severe 
winter of 1862-3, she often left her tent two or three times in the 
night and went round to the beds of those who were apparently 
near death, from the fear tliat the nurses might neglect something 
which needed to be done for them. When diphtheria raged in 
the hospital, and the nurses fearing its contagious character, fled 
from the bed-sides of those suffering from it, Mrs. Husband 
devoted herself to them night and day, fearless of the exposure, 
and where they died of the terrible disease received and forwarded 
to their friends the messages of the dying. 

It is no matter of surprise that when the time came for her to 
leave this hospital, where she had manifested such faithful and 
self-sacrificing care and tenderness for those whom she knew only 
as the defenders of her country, those whom she left, albeit un- 
used to the melting mood, should have wept at losing such a 
friend. "There were no dry eyes in that hospital,^' says one 
who was himself one of its inmates; "all, from the strong man 
ready again to enter the ranks to the poor wreck of humanity 
lying on his death-bed gave evidence of their love for her, and 
sorrow at her departure in copious tears. On her way home she 
stopped for an hour or tAvo at camps A and B in Frederick, 
Maryland, where a considerable number of the convalescents 
from Antietam had been sent, and these on discovering her, sur- 
rounded her ambulance and greeted her most heartily, seeming 
almost wild with joy at seeing their kind friend once more. 
After a brief stay at Philadelphia, during which she visited the 
hospitals almost constantly, she hastened again to the front, and 
at Falmouth early in 1863, after that fearful and disastrous 



MRS. MARY MORRIS HUSBAND. 293 

battle of Fredericksburg she found ample employment for her 
active and energetic nature. As matron of Humphreys' Division 
Hospital (Fifth Corps) she was constantly engaged in ministering 
to the comfort of the wounded, and her solicitude for the welfare 
and prosperity of the men did not end with their discharge from 
the hospital. The informalities or blunders by which they too 
often lost their pay and were sometimes set down as deserters 
attracted her attention, and so far as possible she always procured 
the correction of those errors. Early in April, 1863, she made a 
flying visit to Philadelphia, and thus details in a letter to a 
friend, at the time the kind and amount of labor which almost 
always filled up every hour of those journeys. ^^Left Monday 
evening for home, took two discharged soldiers with me; heard 
that I could not get a pass to return ; so instea d of going directly 
through, stayed in Washington twenty-four hours, and fought a 
battle for a pass. I came off conqueror of course, but not until 
wearied almost to death — my boys in the meantime had gotten 
their pay — so I took them from the Commission Lodge (where I 
had taken them on arriving) to the cars, and off for Baltimore. 
There I placed them in the care of one of the gentlemen of the 
Relief Associations, and arrived home at 1.30 A. M. I carried 
money home for some of the boys, and had business of my own 
to attend to, keeping me constantly going on Wednesday and 
Thursday; left at midnight (Thursday night) for Washington, 
took the morning boat and arrived here this afternoon.'' This 
record of five days of severe labor such as few men could have 
gone through without utter prostration, is narrated in her letter 
to her friend evidently without a thought that there was any- 
thing extraordinary in it; yet it was in a constant succession of 
labors as wearing as this that she lived for full three years of her 
army life. 

Immediately after the battles of Chancellorsville she went to 
United States Ford, but was not allowed to cross, and joined two 
Maine ladies at the hospital on the north side of the Rappahan- 



294 



nock, where they dressed wounds until dark, slept in an ambu- 
lance, and early in the morning went to work again, but were 
soon warned to leave, as it was supposed that the house used as a 
hospital would be shelled. They left, and about half a mile far- 
ther on found the hospital of the Third and Eleventh Corps. 
Here the surgeon in charge urged Mrs. Husband to remain and 
assist him, promising her transportation. She accordingly left her 
ambulance and dressed wounds until midnight. By this time 
the army was in full retreat and passing the hospital. The sur- 
geon forgot his promise, and taking care of himself, left her to get 
away as best she could. It was pitch dark and the rain pouring 
in torrents. She was finally offered a part of the front seat of an 
army (medicine) wagon, and after riding two or three miles on 
the horrible roads the tongue of the wagon broke, and she was 
compelled to sit in the drenching rain for two or three hours till 
the guide could bring up an ambulance, in which she reached 
Falmouth the next day. 

The hospital of which she was lady matron was broken up at 
the time of this battle, but she was immediately installed in the 
same position in the hospital of the Third Division of the Third 
Corps, then filled to overflowing with the Chancellorsville 
wounded. Here she remained until compelled to move North 
with the army by Lee's raid into Pennsylvania in June and 
July, 1863. 

On the 3d of July, the day of the last and fiercest of the 
Gettysburg battles, Mrs. Husband, who had been, from inability 
to get permission to go to the front, passing a few anxious days 
at Philadelphia, started for Gettysburg, determined to go to the 
aid and relief of the soldier boys, who, she well knew, needed 
her services. She reached the battle-field on the morning of the 
4th by way of Westminster, in General Meade's mail- wagon. 
She made her way at first to the hospital of the Third Corps, and 
labored there till that as well as the other field hospitals were 
broken up, when she devoted herself to the wounded in Camp 



MRS. MARY MORRIS HUSBAND. 295 

Letterman. Here she was attacked with miasmatic fever, but 
struggled against it with all the energy of her nature, remaining 
for three weeks ill in her tent. She was at length carried home, 
but as soon as she was convalescent, went to Camp Parole at 
Annapolis, as agent of the Sanitary Commission, to fill the place 
of Miss Clara Davis, (now Mrs. Edward Abbott), who was pros- 
trated by severe illness induced by her severe and continued 
labors. 

In December, 1863, she accepted the position of matron to her 
old hospital, (Third Division of the Third Corps), then located 
at Brandy Station, where she remained till General Grant's order 
issued on the 15th of April caused the removal of all civilians 
from the army. 

A month had not elapsed, before the terrible slaughter of the 
"Wilderness'' and " Spottsylvania," had made that part of Vir- 
ginia a field of blood, and Mrs. Husband hastened to Fredericks- 
burg where no official now barred her progress with his "red 
tape" prohibitions ; here she remained till the first of June, toiling 
incessantly, and then moving on to Port Poyal and White House, 
where the same sad scenes were repeated, and where, amid so 
much suffering and horror, it was difficult to banish the feeling 
of depression. At White House, she took charge of the low diet 
kitchen for the whole Sixth Corps, to which her division had 
been transferred. The number of wounded was very large, this 
corps having suffered severely in the battle of Cold Harbor, and 
her duties were arduous, but she made no complaint, her heart 
being at rest, if she could only do something for her brave soldier 
boys. 

When the base was transferred to City Point, she made her 
way to the Third Division, Sixth Corps' Hospital at the front, 
where she remained until the Sixth Corps were ordered to the 
Shenandoah Valley, when she took charge of the low diet kitchen 
of the Second Corps' Hospital at City Point, and remained there 
until the end. Her labors among the men in this hospital were 



296 

constant and severe, but she won all hearts by her tenderness, 
cheerfulness, and thoughtful consideration of the needs of every 
particular case. Each one of those under her care felt that she 
was specially Ms friend, and interesting and sometimes amusing 
were the confidences imparted to her, by the poor fellows. The 
one bright event of the day to all was the visit of " Mother'^ Plus- 
band to their ward. The apron, with its huge pockets, always 
bore some welcome gift for each, and however trifling it might be 
in itself, it was precious as coming from her hands. Her friends 
in Philadelphia, by their constant supplies, enabled her to dis- 
pense many articles of comfort and luxury to the sick and 
wounded, which could not otherwise have been furnished. 

On the 6th of May, 1865, Mrs. Husband was gratified by 
the sight of our gallant army marching through Richmond. As 
they passed, in long array, they recognized her, and from hun- 
dreds of the soldiers of the Second, Third, and Sixth Corps, rang 
out the loud and hearty '' Hurrah for Mother Husband !^^ while 
their looks expressed their gratitude to one who had been their 
firm and faithful friend in the hour of suffering and danger. 

Mrs. Husband felt that she must do something more for her 
" boys" before they separated and returned to their distant homes ; 
she therefore left Richmond immediately, and traveling with her 
accustomed celerity, soon reached Philadelphia, and gathering up 
from her liberal friends and her own moderate means, a sufficient 
sum to procure the necessary stores, she returned with an ample 
supply, met the soldiers of the corps to which she had been 
attached at Bailey^s Cross Roads, and there spent six or seven 
days in distributing to them the clothing and comforts which they 
needed. Her last opportunity of seeing them was a few days 
later at the grand review in Washington^ 

There was one class of services which Mrs. Husband rendered 
to the soldiers, which we have not mentioned, and in which we 
believe she had no competitor. In the autumn of 1863, her 
attention was called to the injustice of the finding and sentence of 



MRS. MAEY MORRIS HUSBAND. 297 

a court niartialj which had tried a private soldier for some alleged 
offence and sentenced him to be shot. She investigated the case 
and, Avith some difficulty, succeeded in procuring his pardon from 
the President. 

She began from this time to take an interest in these cases of 
trial by summary court martial, and having a turn for legal inves- 
tigation, to which her early ti*aining and her husband's profession 
had inclined her, and a clear judicial mind, she made each one 
her study, and though she found that there were some cases in 
w^hich summary punishment was merited, yet the majority were 
deserving of the interposition of executive clemency, and she 
became their advocate with the patient and kind-hearted Lincoln. 
In scores of instances she secured, not without much difficulty, 
and some abuse from officials ^^ dressed in a little brief authority," 
who disliked her keen and thorough investigation of their pro- 
ceedings, the pardon or the commutation of punishment of those 
sentenced to death. Rarely, if ever, did the President turn a deaf 
ear to her pleadings ; for he knew that they w^ere prompted by 
no sinister motive, or simple humane impulse. Every case which 
she presented had been thoroughly and carefully examined, and 
her knowledge of it was so complete, that he felt he might safely 
trust her. 

Through all these multifarious labors and toils, Mrs. Husband 
has received no compensation from the Government or the Sani- 
tary Commission. She entered the service as a volunteer, and 
her necessities have been met from her own means, and she has 
also given freely to the soldiers and to their families from her not 
over-full purse. Her reward is in the sublime consciousness of 
having been able to accomplish an amount of good which few 
could equal. All over the land, in hundreds of homes, in thou- 
sands of hearts, her name is a household word, and as the mother 
looks upon her son, the wife upon her husband, the child upon 
its father, blessings are breathed forth upon her through whose 
skilful care and watchful nursing these loved ones are spared to 



298 woman's work in the civil war. 

be a joy and support. The contributions and mementoes pre- 
sented by her soldier boys form a large and very interesting 
museum in her home. There are rings almost numberless, carved 
from animal bones, shells, stone, vulcanite, etc., miniature tablets, 
books, harps, etc., inlaid from trees or houses of historic memory, 
minie bullets, which have traversed bone and flesh of patient suf- 
ferers, and shot and shell which have done their part in destroy- 
ing the fortresses of the rebellion. Each memento has its history, 
and all are precious in the eyes of the recipient, as a token of the 
love of those whom she has watched and nursed. 

Her home is the Mecca of the soldiers of the Army of the 
Potomac, and if any of them are sick or in distress in Philadel- 
phia, Mother Husband hastens at once to their relief. Late may 
she return to the skies; and when at last in the glory of a ripe 
and beautiful old age, she lies down to rest, a grateful people shall 
inscribe on her monument, ^^ Here lies all that was mortal of one 
whom all delighted to honor.'' 



HOSPITAL TRANSPORT SERVICE 




MONG the deeds which entitle the United States Sani- 
f taiy Commission to the lasting gratitude of the Amer- 
ican people, was the organization and maintenance of 
the ^^ Hospital Transport Service'^ in the Spring and 
Summer of 1862. When the Army of the Potomac removed 
from the high lands about Washington, to the low marshy and 
miasmatic region of the Peninsula, it required but little discern- 
ment to predict that extensive sickness would prevail among the 
troops; this, and the certainty of sanguinary battles soon to ensue, 
which would multiply the wounded beyond all previous prece- 
dents, were felt, by the officers of the Sanitary Commission, as 
affording sufficient justification, if any were needed for making an 
effort to supplement the provision of the Medical Bureau, which 
could not fail to be inadequate for the coming emergency. Ac- 
cordingly early in April, 1862, Mr. F. L. Olmstead, the Secretary 
of the Commission, having previously secured the sanction of 
the Medical Bureau, made application to the Quartermaster-Gen- 
eral to allow the Commission to take in hand some of the trans- 
port steamboats of his department, of which a large number were 
at that time lying idle, to fit them up and furnish them in all 
respects suitable for the reception and care of sick and wounded 
men, providing surgeons and other necessary attendance without 
cost to Government. After tedious delays and disappointments 
of various kinds — one fine large boat having been assigned, par- 
tially furnished by the Commission, and then withdrawn — an 

299 



300 

order ^vas at length received, authorizing the Commission to take 
possession of any of the Government transports, not in actual 
use, which might at that time be lying at Alexandria. Under 
this authorization the Daniel Webster was assigned to the Com- 
mission on the 25th of April, and having been fitted up, the 
stores shipped, and the hospital corps for it assembled, it reached 
York Eiver on the 30th of April. 

Other boats were subsequently, (several of them, very soon) 
assigned to the Commission, and were successively fitted up, and 
after receiving their freights of sick and w^ounded, sent to Wash- 
ington, Philadelphia, New York and other points with their 
precious cargoes, which w^ere to be transferred to the general hos- 
pitals. Among these vessels were the "Ocean Q.ueen," the " S. 
R. Spaulding,'' the "Elm City,'' the "Daniel Webster,'' No. 2, 
the "Knickerbocker," the clipper ships Euterpe and St. Mark, 
and the Commission chartered the "Wilson Small," and the 
"Elizabeth," two small steamers, as tender and supply boats. 
The Government were vacillating in their management in 
regard to these vessels, often taking them from the Commis- 
sion just when partially or wholly fitted up, on the plea of 
requiring them for some purpose and assigning another vessel, 
often poorly adapted to their service, on board of which the labor 
of fitting and supplying must be again undergone, when that too 
would be withdrawn. 

To each of these hospital transports several ladies were assigned 
by the Commission to take charge of the diet of the patients, 
assist in dressing their wounds, and generally to care for their 
comfort and welfare. Mr. Olmstead, and Mr. Knapp, the Assist- 
ant Secretary, had also in their company, or as they pleasantly 
called them, members of their staff, four ladies, who remained in 
the service, not leaving the vicinity of the Peninsula, until tlie 
transfer of the troops to Acquia Creek and Alexandria late in 
August. Tlicse ladies remained for the most part on board the 
Daniel AVebster, or the Wilson Small, or wherever the headquar- 



THE HOSPITAL TRANSPOET SERVICE. 301 

ters of the Commission in the field might be. Their duties 
consisted in nursing, preparing food for the sick and wounded, 
dressing wounds, in connexion with the surgeons and medical 
students, and in general, making themselves useful to the great 
numbers of wounded and sick who were placed temporarily 
under their charge. Often they provided them with clean beds 
and hospital clothing, and suitable food in preparation for their 
voyage to Washington, Philadelphia, or JSTew York. These four 
ladies were Miss Katherine P. Wormeley, of JSTewport, R. I., 
Mrs. William P. Griffin, of I^ew York, one of the executive 
board of the Woman^s Central Association of Relief, Mrs. Eliza 
W. Howland, wife of Colonel (afterward General) Joseph How- 
land, and her sister. Miss Georgiana Woolsey, both of New York. 
Among those who were in charge of the Hospital Transports 
for one or more of their trips to the cities we have named, and 
by their tenderness and gentleness comforted and cheered the 
poor sufferers, and often by their skilful nursing rescued them 
from the jaws of death, were Mrs. George T. Strong, the wife of 
the Treasurer of the Commission, who made four or five trips -, 
Miss Harriet Douglas Whetten, who served throughout the 
Peninsular Campaign as head of the Women's Department on 
the S. R. Spaulding; Mrs. Laura Trotter, (now Mrs. Charles 
Parker) of Boston, who occupied a similar position on the Daniel 
Webster ; Mrs. Bailey, at the head of the Women's Department 
on the Elm City ; Mrs. Charlotte Bradford, a Massachusetts lady 
who made several trips on the Elm City and Knickerbocker ; 
JNIiss Amy M. Bradley, whose faithful services are elsewhere 
recorded ; Mrs. Annie Etheridge, of the Fifth Michigan, Miss 
Bradley's faithful and zealous co-worker ; Miss Helen L. Gilson, 
who here as well as everywhere else proved herself one of the 
most eminently useful women in the service; Miss M. Gardiner, 
who was on several of the steamers; Mrs. Balustier, of New 
York, one of the most faithful and self-sacrificing of the ladies 
of the Hospital Transport service ; Mrs. Mary Morris Husband, 



302 

of Philadelphiaj who made four voyages^ and whose valuable 
services are elsewhere recited; Mrs. Bellows, the wife of the 
President of the Commission, who made one voyage ; Mrs. Mer- 
ritt, and several other ladies. 

But let us return to the ladies who remained permanently at 
the Commission's headquarters in the Peninsula. Their position 
and duties were in many respects more trying and arduous than 
those who accompanied the sick and wounded to the hospitals of 
the cities. The Daniel Webster, which, as we have said, reached 
York Piver April 30, discharged her stores except what would 
be needed for her trip to New York, and having placed them in 
a store-house on shore, began to supply the sick in camp and hos- 
pital, and to receive such patients on board as it was deemed 
expedient to send to New York. These were washed, their 
clothing changed, they were fed and put in good clean beds, and 
presently sent off to their destination. The staff then commenced 
putting the Ocean Queen, which had just been sent to them, into 
a similar condition of fitness for receiving the sick and wounded. 
She had not, on her arrival, a single bunk or any stores on board ; 
and before any preparation could be made, the regimental and 
brigade surgeons on shore (who never would wait) began to send 
their sick and wounded on board ; remonstrance was useless, and 
the whole party worked with all their might to make what pro- 
vision was possible. One of the party went on shore, found a 
rebel cow at pasture, shot her, skinned her with his pocket-knife, 
and brought off the beef. A barrel of Indian meal, forgotten in 
discharging the freight of the vessel, was discovered in the hold 
and made into gruel almost by magic, and cups of it were ladled 
out to the poor fellows as they tottered in, with their faces fliushed 
with typhoid fever; by dint of constant hard work, bunks were 
got up, stores brought on board, two draught oxen left behind 
by Franklin's Division found and slaughtered, and nine hundred 
patients having been taken on board, the vessel's anchors were 
weighed and she went out to sea. This was very much the ex- 



THE HOSPITAL TRANSPORT SERVICE. 303 

perience of the party during their stay in the Peninsula. Hard, 
constant, and hurrying ^vor]v were the rule, a day of comparative rest 
was the exception. Dividing themselves into small parties of two 
or three, they boarded and supplied with the stores of the Commis- 
sion, the boats which the Medical officers of the army had pressed 
into the service filled with wounded and sent without comfort, food 
or attendance, on their way to the hospitals m the vicinity of 
Fortress Monroe; superintended the shipping of patients on the 
steamers which returned from the North; took account of the 
stores needed by these boats and saw that they were sent on 
board; fitted up the new boats furnished to the Commission by 
the Quartermaster's orders; received, sorted and distributed the 
patients brought to the landing on freight-cars, according to 
orders; fed, cleansed, and gave medical aid and nursing to all of 
them, and selected nurses for those to be sent North; and when 
any great emergency came did their utmost to meet it. 

The amount of work actually performed w^as very great; but 
it was performed in such a cheerful triumphant spirit, a spirit 
that rejoiced so heartily in doing something to aid the nation's 
defenders, in sacrificing everything that they might be saved, that 
it was robbed of half its irksomeness and gloom, and most of the 
zealous workers retained their health and vigor even in the mias- 
matic air of the bay and its estuaries. Miss Wormeley, one of 
the transport corps, has supplied, partly from her own pen, and 
partly from that of Miss Georgiana Woolsey, one of her co- 
workers, some vivid pictures of their daily life, which, w^ith her 
permission, we here reproduce from her volume on the " United 
States Sanitary Commission," published in 1863. 

^^The last hundred patients were brought on board" (imagine 
any of the ships, it does not matter which) ^^late last night. 
Though these night-scenes are part of our daily living, a fresh 
eye would find them dramatic. We are awakened in the dead of 
night by a sharp steam-whistle, and soon after feel ourselves 
clawed by little tugs on either side of our big ship, bringing off 



304 woman's work in the civil war. 

the sick and wounded from the shore. And^ at once, the procc^ss 
of taking on hundreds of men — many of them crazed with fever 
— begins. There is the bringing of the stretchers up the side- 
ladder between the two boats ; the stopping at the head of it, 
where the names and home addresses of all who can speak are 
written down, and their knapsacks and little treasures numbered 
and stacked; then the placing of the stretchers on the platform; 
the row of anxious faces above and below deck; the lantern held 
over the hold ; the word given to ' Lower ;' the slow-moving ropes 
and pulleys; the arrival at the bottom; the turning down of the 
anxious faces ; the lifting out of the sick man, and the lifting him 
into his bed; and then the sudden change from cold, hunger and 
friendlessness, into positive comfort and satisfaction, winding up 
with his invariable verdict, if he can speak, — ^This is just like 
home !' 

"We have put ^The Elm City' in order, and she began to fill 
up last night. I wish you could hear the men after they are put 
into bed. Those who can speak, speak with a will; the others 
grunt, or murmur their satisfaction. ^Well, this bed is most too 
soft; I don't know as I shall sleep, for thinking of it.' ^What 
have you got there?' ^That is bread; wait till I j)ut butter on 
it.' ^Butter, on soft bread!' he slowly ejaculates, as if not sure 
that he isn't Aladdin with a genie at work upon him. Instances 
of such high unselfishness happen daily, that, though I forget 
them daily, I feel myself strengthened in my trust in human 
nature, without making any reflections about it. Last night, a 
man comfortably put to bed in a middle berth (there were three 
tiers, and the middle one incomparably the best) seeing me point 
to the upper berth as the place to put the man on an approaching 
stretcher, cried out : ^ Stop ! put me up there. Guess I can stand 
h'isting better'n him.'' It was agony to both. 

"I have a long history to tell you, one of these days, of the 
gratefulness of the men. I often wish, — as I give a comfort to 
some poor fellow, and see the sense of rest it gives him, and hear 



THE HOSPITAL TRANSPORT SERVICE. 305 

the favorite speech: ^O, that^s good, it's just as if mother was 
here/ — that the man or woman who supplied that comfort were 
by to see how blessed it is. Believe me, you may all give and 
work in the earnest hope that yon alleviate suffering, but none of 
you realize what you do ; perhaps you can't conceive of it, unless 
you could see your gifts in use. * * * * 

" We are now on board ^ The Knickerbocker,' unpacking and 
arranging stores, and getting pantries and closets in order. I am 
writing on the floor, interrupted constantly to join in a laugh. 

Miss is sorting socks, and pulling out the funny little balls 

of yarn, and big darning-needles stuck in the toes, with which 
she is making a fringe across my back. Do spare us the darning- 
needles! Reflect upon us, rushing in haste to the linen closet, 
and plunging our hands into the bale of stockings ! I certainly 
will make a collection of sanitary clothing. I solemnly aver that 
yesterday I found a pair of drawers made for a case of amputation 
at the thigh. And the slippers ! Only fit for pontoon bridges !" 

This routine of fitting up the ships as they arrived, and of 
receiving the men on board as they came from the front, was 
accompanied by constant hard work in meeting requisitions from 
regiments, with ceaseless battlings for transportation to get sup- 
plies to the front for camps and hospitals; and was diversified by 
short excursions, which we will call "special relief;" such, for 
instance, as the following: — 

"At midnight two steamers came alongside ^The Elm City,' 
each with a hundred sick, bringing word that ^The Daniel Web- 
ster No. 2' (a sidewheel vessel, not a Commission boat) was 
aground at a little distance, with two hundred more, having no 
one in charge of them, and nothing to eat. Of course they had 
to be attended to. So, amidst the wildest and most beautiful 
storm of thunder and lightning, four of us pulled ofl* to her in a 
little boat, with tea, bread, brandy, and beef-essence. (No one 
c ui tell how it tries my nerves to go toppling round at night in 
little boats, and clambering up ships' sides on little ladders). We 

39 



306 

fed them, — the usual process. Poor fellows ! they were so crazy ! 
— And then ' The Wissahickon' came alongside to transfer them 
to ' The Elm City/ Only a part of them could go in the first 
load. Dr. Ware, with his constant thoughtfulness, made me go 
in her, to escape returning in the small boat. Just as we pushed 
off, the steam gave out, and we drifted end on to the shore. Then 
a boat had to put off from ' The Elm City,' with a line to tow us 
up. All this time the thunder was incessant, the rain falling in 
torrents, whilst every second the beautiful crimson lightning 
flashed the whole scene open to us. Add to this, that there were 
three men alarmingly ill, and (thinking to be but a minute in 
reaching the other ship) I had not even a drop of brandy for 
them. Do you wonder, therefore, that I forgot your letters ?'' 

Or, again, the following:- — 

"Sixty men were heard of as lying upon the railroad without 
food, and no one to look after them. Some of us got at once into 
the stern-wheeler ' Wissahickon,' which is the Commission's car- 
riage, and, with provisions, basins, towels, soap, blankets, etc., 
went up to the railroad bridge, cooking tea and spreading bread 
and butter as we went. A tremendous thunder-storm came up, 
in the midst of which the men were found, put on freight-cars, 
and pushed to the landing; — fed, washed, and taken on the tug 
to 'The Elm City.' Dr. Ware, in his hard working on shore, 
had found fifteen other sick men without food or shelter, — there 
being 'no room' in the tent-hospital. He had studied the neigh- 
borhood extensively for shanties; found one, and put his men in 
it for the nio^ht. In the morning we ran up on the tug, cooking 
breakfast for them as we ran, scrambling eggs in a wash-basin 
over a spirit-lamp : — and such eggs ! nine in ten addled ! It must 
be understood that wash-basins in the rear of an army are made 
of^m." 

And here is one more such story : " We were called to go on 
board ' The Wissahickon,' from thence to ' The Sea-shore' and run 
down in the latter to West Point, to bring off twenty-five men 



THE HOSPITAL TRANSPOET SERVICE. 307 

said to be lying tliore sick and destitute. Two doctors went with 
us. After hunting an hour for ^The Sea-shore' in vain^ and 
having got as low as Cumberland, we decided (loe being Mrs. 
Howland and I, for the doctors were new and docile, and glad to 
leave the responsibility upon us women) to push on in the tug, 
rather than leave the men another night on the ground, as a 
heavy storm of wind and rain had been going on all the day. The 
pilot remonstrated, but the captain approved; and, if the firemen 
had not suddenly let out the fires, and detained us two hours, we 
might have got our men on board, and returned, comfortably, 
soon after dark. But the delay lost us the precious daylight. It 
was night before the last man was got on board. There were 
fifty-six of tliem, ten very sick ones. The boat had a little shelter- 
cabin. As we were laying mattresses on the floor, whilst the 
doctors were finding the men, the captain stopped us, refusing to 
let us put typhoid fever below the deck, on account of the crew, 
he said, and threatening to push off, at once, from the shore. 
Mrs. Howland and I looked at him ! I did the terrible, and she 
the pathetic, — and he abandoned the contest. The return passage 
was rather an anxious one. The river is much obstructed with 
sunken ships and trees; the night was dark, and we had to feel 
our way, slackening speed every ten minutes. If we had been 
alone it wouldn't have mattered; but to have fifty men unable to 
move upon our hands, was too heavy a responsibility not to make 
us anxious. The captain and pilot said the boat was leaking, 
and remarked awfully that ^ the water was six fathoms deep about 
there;' but we saw their motive and were not scared. We Avere 
safe alongside ^The Spaulding' by midnight; but Mr. Olmstead's 
tone of voice, as he said, ^ You don't know how glad I am to see 
you,' showed how much he had been worried. And yet it was 
the best thing we could have done, for three, perhaps five, of tlie 
men would have been dead before morning. To-day (Sunday) 
they are living and likely to live. Is this Sunday? What days 



808 

our Sundays have been ! I think of you all at rest, and the sound 
of church bells in your ears, with a strange, distant feeling/' 

This was the general state of things at the time when the battle 
of Fair Oaks was fought, June 1, 1862. All the vessels of the 
Commission except ^^The Spaulding^' — and she was hourly ex- 
pected — were on the spot, and ready. " The Elm City'' happened 
to be full of fever cases. A vague rumor of a battle prevailed, 
soon made certain by the sound of the cannonading; and she 
left at once (4 A. M.) to discharge her sick at Yorktown, and 
performed the great feat of getting back to White House, cleaned, 
and with her beds made, before sunset of the same day. By that 
time the wounded were arriving. The boats of the Commission 
filled up calmly. The young men had a system by which they 
shipped their men; and there was neither hurry nor confusion, 
as the vessels, one by one, — ^'The Elm City," ^^The Knicker- 
bocker," " The Daniel Webster," — filled up and left the landing. 
After them, other boats, detailed by the Government for hospital 
service, came up. These boats were not under the control of the 
Commission. There was no one specially appointed to take charge 
of them; no one to receive the wounded at the station; no one to 
see that the boats were supplied with proper stores. A frightful 
scene of confusion and misery ensued. The Commission came 
forward to do what it could ; but it had no power, only the right 
of charity. It could not control, scarcely check, the fearful con- 
fusion that prevailed, as train after train came in, and the wounded 
were brought and thrust upon the various boats. But it did 
nobly what it could. Night and day its members worked: not, 
it must be remembered, in its own well-organized service, but in 
the hard duty of making the best of a bad case. Not the smallest 
preparation was found, on at least three of the boats, for the com- 
mon food of the men; and, as for sick-food, stimulants, drinks, 
there was nothing of the kind on any one of the boats, and not a 
pail nor a cup to distribute food, had there been any. 

No one, it is believed, can tell the story, as it occurred, of the 



THE HOSPITAL TRANSPORT SERVICE. 309 

next three days; — no one can tell distinctly what boats they were, 
on which they lived and worked through those days and nights. 
They remember scenes and sounds, but they remember nothing 
as a whole; and, to this day, if they are feverish and weary, 
comes back the sight of men in every condition of horror, borne, 
shattered and shrieking, by thoughtless hands, who banged the 
stretchers against pillars and posts, dumped them anywhere, and 
walked over the men without compassion. Imagine an immense 
river-steamboat filled on every deck: every berth, every square 
inch of room, covered with wounded men, — even the stairs and 
gangways and guards filled with those who were less badly 
w^ounded; and then imagine fifty well men, on every kind of 
errand, hurried and impatient, rushing to and fro, every touch 
bringing agony to the poor fellows, whilst stretcher after stretcher 
comes along, hoping to find an empty place; and then imagine 
what it was for these people of the Commission to keep calm 
themselves, and make sure that each man, on such a boat as that, 
was properly refreshed and fed. Sometimes two or even three 
such boats were lying side by side, full of suffering and horrors. 

This was the condition of things with the subordinates. With 
the chiefs it was aggravated by a wild confusion of conflicting 
orders from headquarters, and conflicting authority upon the 
ground, until the wonder is that any method could have been 
obtained. But an earnest purpose can do almost everything, and 
out of the struggle came daylight at last. The first gleam of it 
was from a hospital tent and kitchen, which, by the goodness and 
thoughtfulness of Captain (now Colonel) Sawtelle, Assistant- 
Quartermaster, was pitched for the Commission, just at the head 
of the wharf, and near the spot where the men arrived in the 
cars. This tent (Dr. Ware gave to its preparation the only hour 
when he might have rested through that long nightmare) became 
the strength and the comfort of the Commission people. As the 
men passed it, from cars to boat, they could be refreshed and 
stimulated, and from it meals were sent to all the boats at the 



310 WOMAN'S WORK I^ THE ClA^IL WAR. 

landing. During that dreadful battle-week, three thousand men 
were fed from that tent. It was not the Yale of Caslimere, but 
many dear associations cluster round it. 

After the pressure was over, the Commission went back to its 
old routine^ but upon a new principle. A member of the Com- 
mission came down to White House for a dav or two, and 
afterward wrote a few words about that work. As he saw it 
with a fresh eye, his letter will be given here. He says: — 

"J wish you could have been with me at White House during 
my late visit, to see how much is being done bv our agents there 
to alleviate the suiferings of the sick and wounded soldiers. I 
have seen a good deal of suffering among our volunteers, and 
observed the marvellous variety and energy of the beneficence 
bestowed by the patriotic and philanthropic in camp, in hospital, 
and on transports for the sick; but nothing has ever impressed 
me so deeply as this. Perhaps I can better illustrate my meaning 
by sketching a few of the daily labors of the agents of the Com- 
mission as I saw them. The sick and wounded were usually sent 
down from the front by rail, a distance of about twenty miles, 
over a rough road, and in the common freight-cars. A train 
generally arrived at White House at nine P. ]M., and another at 
two A. ]M. In order to prepare for the reception of the sick and 
wounded, Mr. Olmstead, with Drs. Jenkins and Ware, had 
pitched, by the side of the railway, at White House, a large num- 
ber of tents, to shelter and feed the convalescent. These tents 
were their only shelter while waiting to be shipped. Among 
them was one used as a kitchen and work-room, or pantry, by the 
ladies in our service, who prepared beef-tea, milk-punch, and 
other food and comforts, in anticipation of the arrival of the 
trains. By the terminus of the railway the large Commission 
steamboat ^Knickerbocker' lay in the Pamunkey, in readiness for 
the reception of four hundred and fifty patients, provided with 
comfortable beds and a corps of devoted surgeons, dressers, nm'ses, 
and litter-bearers. Just outside of this vessel lay ^ The Elizabeth/ 



THE HOSPITAL TRANSPORT SERVICE. 311 

a stoam-barge, loaded with the hospital stores of the Commission, 
and in charge of a store-keeper, always ready to issue supplies. 
Outside of this again lay ^The Wilson Small,' the headquarters 
of our Commission. As soon as a train arrived, the moderately 
sick were selected and placed in the tents near the railroad and 
fed; those more ill were carried to the upper saloon of ^The 
Knickerbocker,' while the seriously ill, or badly wounded, were 
placed in the low^er saloon, and immediately served by the sur- 
geons and dressers. During the three nights that I observed the 
working of the system, about seven hundred sick and wounded 
were provided with quarters and ministered to in all their wants 
with a tender solicitude and skill that excited my deepest admira- 
tion. To see Drs. Ware and Jenkins, lantern in hand, passing 
through the trains, selecting the sick with reference to their 
necessities, and the ladies following to assuage the thirst, or 
arouse, by judiciously administered stimulants, the failing strength 
of the brave and uncomplaining sufferers, was a spectacle of 
the most touching character. If you had experienced the de- 
bilitating influence of the Pamunkey climate, you would be 
filled with wonder at the mere physical endurance of our corps, 
who certainly could not have been sustained in the performance 
of duties, involving labor by day and through sleepless nights, 
without a strong sense of their usefulness and success. 

"At Savage's Station, too, the Commission had a valuable 
depot, where comfort and assistance was dispensed to the sick 
when changing from the ambulances to the cars. I wish I could 
do justice to the subject of my hasty narrative, or in any due 
measure convey to your mind the impressions left on mine in ob- 
serving, even casually, the operations in the care of the sick at 
these two points. 

" When we remember what was done by the same noble band 
of laborers after the battles of Williamsburg and Fair Oaks, in 
ministering to the wants of thousands of wounded, I am sure tha t 



312 

we shall join with them in gratitude and thankfulness that they 
were enabled to be there." 

But the end of it all was at hand ; the " change of base," of 
which the Commission had some private intelligence, came to 
pass. The sick and wounded were carefully gathered up from 
the tents and hospitals, and sent slowly away down the winding 
river — " The Wilson Small " lingering as long as possible, till the 
telegraph wires had been cut, and the enemy was announced, by 
mounted messengers, to be at " TunstalFs ;" in fact, till the roar 
of the battle came nearer, and we knew that Stoneman with his 
cavalry was falling back to Williamsburg, and that the enemy 
were about to march into our deserted places. 

^'All night we sat on the deck of ^The SmalP slowly moving 
away, watching the constantly increasing cloud and the fire-flashes 
over the trees towards the White House ; watching the fading out 
of what had been to us, through these strange weeks, a sort of 
home, where all had worked together and been happy ; a place 
which is sacred to some of us now for its intense living remem- 
brances, and for the hallowing of them all by the memory of one 
who, through months of death and darkness, lived and worked 
in self-abnegation, lived in and for the suffering of others, and 
finally gave himself a sacrifice for them." * 

"We are coaling here to-night (^Wilson Small,^ off Norfolk, 
June 30th, 1862). We left White House Saturday night, and 
rendezvoused at West Point. Captain Sawtelle sent us off early, 
with despatches for Fortress Monroe ; this gave us the special fun 
of being the first to come leisurely into the panic then raging at 
Yorktown. ^ The Small ^ was instantly surrounded by terror- 
stricken boats; the people of the big ^St. Mark^ leaned, pale, over 
their bulwarks, to question us. Nothing could be more delightful 
than to be as calm and monosyllabic as we were. ***** ^y^ 
leave at daybreak for Harrison's Bar, James River, where our 



* Dr. Kobert Ware. 



THE HOSPITAL TEANSPORT SERVICE. 313 

gunboats are said to be ; we hope to get further up, but General 
Dix warns us that it is not safe. What are we about to learn ? 
No one here can tell. * * * ^h >i. (Harrison's Bar, July 2d). We 
arrived here yesterday to hear the thunder of the battle,* and to 
find the army just approaching this landing ; last night it was a 
verdant shore, to-day it is a dusty plain. ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ' Xhe Spaul- 
ding' has passed and gone ahead of us ; her ironsides can carry her 
safely past the rifle-pits whicli line the shore. No one can tell us 
as yet what work there is for us ; the wounded have not come 

•tyx ^^ >i^ ^ "^ >^ ^ 

^'Hospital Transport ' SpaulcUng,' July Sd. — Reached Harrison's 
Bar at 11 A. m., July 1st, and were ordered to go up the James 
River, as far as Carter's Landing. To do this we must pass the 
batteries at City Point. We were told there was no danger if we 
should carry a yellow flag ; yellow flag we had none, so we trusted 
to the red Sanitary Commission, and prepared to run it. ^ The 
Galena' hailed us to keep below, as we passed the battery. 
Shortly after, we came up with ' The Monitor,' and the little 
captain, with his East India hat, trumpet in hand, repeated the 
advice of ' The Galena,' and added, that if he heard firing, he would 
follow us. Our cannon pointed its black muzzle at the shore, and 
on we went. As we left ' The Monitor,' the captain came to me, 
with his grim smile, and said, ^ I'll take those mattresses you spoke 
of We had joked, as people will, about our danger, and I had 
suggested mattresses round the wheel-house, never thinking that 
he would try it. But the captain was in earnest ; when was he 
anything else? So the contrabands brought up the mattresses, 
and piled them against the wheel-house, and the pilot stood 
against the mast, with a mattress slung in the rigging to protect 
him. In an hour we had passed the danger and reached Carter';^ 
Landing, and there was the army, ' all that was left of it.' * * * 
Over all the bank, on the lawns of that lovely spot, under the 



■^- Malvern Hill. 
40 



314 

sliade of the large trees that fringed the outer park, lay hundreds 
of our poor boys^ brought from the battle-fields of six days. It 
seemed a hopeless task even to feed them. We went first into 
the hospital, and gave them refreshment all round. One man, 
burnt up with fever, burst into tears when I spoke to him. I 
held his hand silently, and at last he sobbed out, ' You are so 
kind, — I — am so weak.' We were ordered by the surgeon in 
charge to station ourselves on the lawn, and wait the arrival of 
the ambulances, so as to give something (we had beef-tea, soup, 
brandy, etc., etc.) to the poor fellows as they arrived. ^ * * * * 
Late that night came peremptory orders from the Quartermaster, 
for ^The Spaulding' to drop down to Harrison's Landing. We 
took some of the wounded with us ; others went by land or ambu- 
lances, and some — it seems incredible — walked the distance. 
Others were left behind and taken prisoners; for the enemy 
reached Carter's Landing as we left it." 

The work of the Commission upon the hospital transports w^as 
about to close. 

But before it was all over, the various vessels had made several 
trips in the service of the Commission, and one voyage of '^ The 
Spaulding" must not pass unrecorded. 

^^We were ordered up to City Point, under a flag of truce, to 
receive our wounded men who were prisoners in Richmond. * * 
* * * At last the whistle sounded and the train came in sight. 
The poor fellows set up a weak cheer at the sight of the old flag, 
and those who had the strength hobbled and tumbled off the train 
almost before it stopped. We took four hundred and one on 
board. Two oth^r vessels w^hich accompanied us took each two 
hundred more. The rebel soldiers had been kind to our men, — 
so they said, — but the citizens had taken pains to insult them. 
One man burst into tears as he was telling me of their misery : 
^ May God defend me from such again.' God took him to Him- 
self, poor suffering soul ! He died the next morning, — died 



THE HOSPITAL TRANSPORT SERVICE. 315 

because he would not let them take off his arm. ^ I wasn't going 
to let them have it in Richmond ; I said I would take it back to 
old Massachusetts.' Of course we had a hard voyage with our 
poor felloAvs in such a condition^ but^ at least, they were cleaned 
and w^ll fed.'' 



OTHER LABORS OF SOME OF THE MEMBERS OF THE 
HOSPITAL TRANSPORT CORPS. 




OST of the ladies connected with this Hospital Trans- 
port service, distinguished themselves in other depart- 
ments of philanthropic labor for the soldiers, often not 
less arduous, and sometimes not cheered by so pleasant 
companionship. Miss Bradley, as we have seen accomplished 
a noble work in connection with the Soldiers' Home at Wash- 
ington, and the Rendezvous of Distribution ; Miss Gilson and 
Mrs. Husband were active in every good word and work ; Mrs 
Charlotte Bradford succeeded Miss Bradley in the charge 
of the Soldiers' Home at Washington, where she accomplished a 
world of good. Mrs. W. P. Griffin, though compelled by ill- 
ness contracted during her services on the Peninsula, returned 
with quickened zeal and more fervid patriotism to her work in 
connection with the "Woman's Central Association of Relief," 
in New York, of which she was up to the close of the war one 
of the most active and untiring managers. Miss Harriet 
Douglas Whetten, who after two or three voyages back and 
forth in different vessels, was finally placed in charge of the 
Woman's Department on board of the Spaulding, where she 
remained until that vessel was given up by the Commission, and 
indeed continued on board for two or three voyages after the ves- 
sel became a Government hospital transport. Her management 
on board the Spaulding was admirable, eliciting the praise of all 
who saw it. When the Portsmouth Grove General Hospital in 
316 



OTHER LABORS IN" THE HOSPITAL TRAI^SPORT CORPS. 317 

Rhode Island was opened, under the charge of Miss Wormeley, 
as Lady Superintendent, that lady invited her to become her 
assistant ; she accepted the invitation and remained there a year, 
when she was invited to become Lady Superintendent of the 
Carter General Hospital, at Washington, D. C, a position of 
g]'eat responsibility, which she filled with the greatest credit and 
success, retaining it to the close of the war. 

An intimate friend, who was long associated with her, says of 
her, " Miss Whetten's absolute and untiring devotion to the sick 
men was beyond all praise. She is a horn mirse. She was per- 
haps less energetic and rapid than others, but no one could quite 
come up to her in tender care, and in that close watching and 
sympathetic knowledge about a patient which belongs only to a 
true nurse. And when I say that she was less energetic than 
some, I am in fact saying something to her honor. Her nature 
was calmer and less energetic, but she worked as hard and for a 
longer time together than any of us, and this was directly in 
opposition to her habits and disposition, and was in fact a triumph 
over herself. She did more than any one personally for the men 
— the rest of us worked more generally — when a man's sufferings 
or necessities were relieved, we thought no more about him — but 
she took a warm personal interest in the individual. In the end 
this strain upon her feelings wore down her spirits, but it Avas a 
feature of her success, and there must be many a poor fellow, 
who if he heard her name ^Vould rise up and call her blessed." 

Three or four of the ladies especially connected with the head- 
quarters of the Commission in the Hospital Transport Service, 
from their important services elsewhere, are entitled to a fuller 
notice. Among these we must include the accomplished historian 
of the earlier work of the Commission. 



KATHERINE P. WORMELEY 




MO^N^G the many of our countrywomen who have been 
active and ardent in the soldier's cause^ some may have 
devoted themselves to the service for a longer period, 
but few with more earnestness and greater ability than 
the lady whose name stands at the head of this sketch, and few 
have entered into a greater variety of details in the prosecution 
of the work. 

Katherine Prescott Wormeley was born in England. Her 
father though holding the rank of a Rear-Admiral in the British 
Navy, was a native of Virginia. Her mother is a native of 
Boston, Massachusetts. Miss Wormeley may therefore be said 
to be alien to her birth-place, and to be an American in fact as 
in feelings. She now resides with her mother at Newport, 
Rhode Island. 

Miss Wormeley was among the earliest to engage in the work 
of procuring supplies and aid for the volunteer soldiery. The 
work began in Newport early in July, 1861. The first meeting 
of women was held informally at the house of Miss Wormeley's 
mother. An organization w^as obtained, rooms secured (being 
lent for the purpose), and about two thousand dollars subscribed. 
The Society, which assumed the name of the "Woman's Union 
Aid Society'' immediately commenced the work with vigor, and 
shortly forwarded to the Sanitary Commission at Washington 
their first cases of clothing and supplies. Miss Wormeley 
remained at the head of this society until April, 1862. It was 

318 



KATHEEINE PEESCOTT WORMELEY. 319 

kept in funds by private gifts, and by the united efforts of all the 
churches of Newport, and the United States Naval Academy 
which was removed thither from Annapolis, Maryland, in the 
spring of 1861. 

During the summer of 1861 several ladies (summer residents 
of Newport), were in the habit of sending to Miss Wormeley 
many poor women, with the request that she would furnish them 
with steady employment upon hospital clothing, the ladies paying 
for the work. After they left, the poor women whom they had 
thus benefited, felt the loss severely, and the thought occurred to 
Miss Wormeley that the outfitting of a great army must furnish 
much suitable work for them could it be reached. 

After revolving the subject in her own mind, she wrote to 
Quartermaster-General Meigs at Washington, making inquiries, 
and was by him referred to the Department Quartermaster- 
General, Colonel D. H. Vinton, United States Army, office of 
army clothing and equipage. New York. Colonel Vinton replied 
in the kindest manner, stating the difficulties of the matter, but 
expressing his willingness to give Miss Wormeley a contract if 
she thought she could surmount them. 

Miss Wormeley found her courage equal to the attempt, and 
succeeded far more easily than she had expected in carrying out 
her plans. She engaged rooms at a low rent, and found plenty 
of volunteer assistance on all sides. Ladies labored unweariedly 
in cutting and distributing the work to the applicants. Gentle- 
men packed the cases, and attended to the sliipments. During 
the winter of 1861-2 about fifty thousand army shirts were thus 
made, not one of which was returned as imperfect, and she was 
thus enabled to circulate in about one hundred families, a sum 
equal to six thousand dollars, which helped them well through 
the winter. 

Colonel Vinton, as was the case with other officers very gene- 
rally throughout the war, showed great kindness and appreciation 
of these efforts of women. And though this contract must have 



320 

given him far more trouble than contracts with regular clothing 
establishments, his goodness, which was purely benevolent, never 
flagged. 

During all this time the work of the Women's Union Aid 
Society was also carried on at Miss Wormeley's rooms, and a 
large number of cases were packed and forwarded thence, either 
to New York or directly to Washington. Miss Wormeley, her- 
self, still superintended this matter, and though an Associate 
Manager of the New England Women's Branch of the Sanitary 
Commission, preferred this direct transmission as a saving both 
of time and expense. 

The Society was earnest and indefatigable in its exertions, 
acting always with great promptness and energy while under the 
direction of Miss Wormeley. On one occasion, as an instance, a 
telegraphic message from Washington brought at night an urgent 
call for a supply of bed-sacks. Early in the morning all the 
material in Newport was bought up, as many sewing-machines as 
possible obtained, and seventy-five bed-sacks finished and sent off" 
that day, and as many more the following day. 

Miss Wormeley was just closing up her contract when, in April, 
1862, the '^Hospital Transport Service" was organized, princi- 
pally by the efforts of Mr. Frederick Law Olmstead, the General 
Secretary of the Sanitary Commission. The sudden transfer of 
the scene of active war from the high grounds bordering the 
Potomac to a low and swampy region intersected by a network of 
creeks and rivers, made necessary appliances for the care of the 
sick and wounded, which the Government was not at that time 
prepared to furnish. Hence arose the arrangement by w^hich 
certain large steamers, chartered, but then unemployed by the 
Government, were transferred to the Sanitary Commission to be 
fitted up as Hospital Transports for the reception and conveyance 
of the sick and wounded. To the superintendence of this work, 
care of the sick, and other duties of this special service, a number 



KATHERINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY. 321 

of agents of the Commission, with volunteers of both sexes, were 
appointed, and after protracted and vexatious delays in procuring 
the first transports assembled at Alexandria, Virginia, on the 25th 
of April, and embarked on the Daniel Webster for York River, 
which they reached on the 30th of April. 

Miss Worrneley was one of the first to become connected with 
this branch of the service, and proceeded at once to her field of 
duty. She remained in this employment until August of the 
same year, and passed through all the horrors of the Peninsula 
campaign. By this, of course, is not understood the battles of the 
campaign, nor the army movements, but the reception, washing, 
feeding, and ministering to the sick and the wounded — scenes 
which are too full of horror for tongue to tell, or pen to describe, 
but which must always remain indelibly impressed upon the minds 
and hearts of those who were actors in them. 

The ladies, it may be observed, who were attached to the 
Hospital Transport Corps at the headquarters of the Commission, 
were all from the higher walks of society, women of the greatest 
culture and refinement, and unaccustomed to toil or exhausting- 
care. Yet not one of them shrank from hardship, or revolted 
at any labor or exertion which could serve to bring comfort to 
the sufferers under their charge. 

Active and endowed with extraordinary executive ability. 
Miss Wormeley was distinguished for her great usefulness during 
this time of fierce trial, when the malaria of the Chickahominy 
s^vamps was prostrating its thousands of brave men, and the 
battles of Williamsburg, White House, and Fair Oaks, and the 
disastrous retreat to Harrison's Landing were marked by an almost 
unexampled carnage. 

While the necessity of exertion continued. Miss Wormeley 
and her associates bore up bravely, but no sooner was this ended 
than nearly all succumbed to fever, or the exhaustion of excessive 
and protracted fatigue. Nevertheless, within a few days after 
Miss Wormeley's return home, the Surgeon-General, passing 

41 



322 woman's work in the civil war. 

through Newport, came to call upon her and personally solicit 
her to take charge of the Woman's Department of the Lowell 
General Hospital, then being organized at Portsmouth Grove, 
E,. I. After a brief hesitation, on account of her health. Miss 
Wormeley assented to the proposal, and on the 1st of September, 
1862, went to the hospital. She was called, officially, the ^^Lady 
Superintendent,'' and her duties were general ; they consisted less 
of actual nursing, than the organization and superintendence of 
her department. Under her charge were the Female Nurses, 
the Diet Kitchens, and Special diet, the Linen Department, and 
the Laundry, where she had a steam Washing Machine, which 
was capable of washing and mangling four thousand pieces a 
day. 

The hospital had beds for two thousand five hundred patients. 
Four friends of Miss Wormeley joined her here, and were her 
Assistant Superintendents — Misses G. M. and J. S. Woolsey, Miss 
Harriet D. Whetten, of New York, and Miss Sarah C. Wool- 
sey, of New Haven. Each of these had charge of seven Wards, 
and was responsible to the surgeons for the nursing and diet 
of the sick men. To the exceedingly valuable co-operation of 
these ladies. Miss Wormeley has, on all occasions, attributed in 
a great measure the success which attended and rewarded her 
services iui this department of labor, as also to the kindness of 
the Surgeon in charge. Dr. Lewis A. Edwards, and of his Assist- 
ants. 

She remained at Portsmouth Grove a little more than a year, 
carrying on the arrangements of her department with great ability 
and perfect success. On holidays, through the influence of her- 
self and her assistants, the inmates received ample donations for 
the feasts appropriate to the occasions, and at all times liberal 
gifts of books, games, &c., for their instruction and entertain- 
ment. But in September, 1863, partly from family reasons, and 
partly because her health gave ^vay, she was forced to resign and 
return home. 



KATHERINE PRESCOTT WOEMELEY. 323 

From that time her labors in hospital ceased. But, in the 
following December, at the suggestion of Mr. and Mrs. George 
Ticknor, of Boston, and of other friends, she prepared for the 
Boston Sanitary Fair, a charming volume entitled, "The United 
States Sanitary Commission ; A Sketch of its Purposes and its 
Work.^^ 

This book, owing to unavoidable hindrances, was not com- 
menced till so late that but eleven days were allowed for its 
<^,ompletion. But, with her accustomed energy, having most of her 
materials at hand, Miss Wormeley commenced and finished the 
book within the specified time, without other assistance than that 
volunteered by friends in copying and arranging papers. Grace- 
ful in style, direct in detail, plain in statement and logical in 
argument, it shows, however, no traces of hasty writing. It met 
with great and deserved success, and netted some hundreds of 
dollars to the fair. 

Miss Wormeley attributes much of the success of her work, in 
all departments, to the liberality of her friends. During the war 
she received from the community of Newport, alone, over seven- 
teen thousand dollars, beside, large donations of brandy, wine, 
flannel, etc., for the Commission and hospital use. The Newport 
Aid Society, which she assisted in organizing, worked well and 
faithfully to the end, and rendered valuable services to the San- 
itary Commission, and she was enabled at all times to add largely 
to its funds. Since the completion of her book, her health has 
not permitted her to engage in active service. 



THE MISSES WOOLSEY. 




E are not aware of any other instance among the women 
who have devoted themselves to works of philanthropy 
and patriotism during the recent war^ in which four 
sisters have together consecrated their services to the 
cause of the nation. In social position, culture, refinement, and 
all that could make life pleasant. Misses Georgiana and Jane C. 
Woolsey, and their married sisters, Mrs. Joseph and Mrs. Robert 
Howland, were blessed above most women ; and if there were any 
who might have deemed themselves excused from entering upon 
the drudgery, the almost menial service incident to the Hospital 
Transport service, to the position of Assistant Superintendent of a 
crowded hospital, of nurse in field hospitals after a great battle, or 
of instructors and superintendents of freedmen and freedwomen ; 
these ladies might have pleaded an apology for some natural 
shrinking from the work, from its dissimilarity to all their ipre- 
vious pursuits. But to the call of duty and patriotism, they had 
no such objections to urge. 

Mrs. Joseph Howland was the wife of a Colonel in the Union 
army, and felt it a privilege to do something for the brave men 
with whom her husband's interests were identified, and accom- 
panying him to the camp whenever this was permitted, she minis- 
tered to the sick or wounded men of his command with a tender- 
ness and gentleness which won all hearts. When the invitation 
was given to her and her sister to unite with others in the Hospital 
Transport service, she rejoiced at the opportunity for wider use- 

324 



THE jVriSSES WOOESEY. 325 

fnmess in the cause she loved; hoAV faithfully^ earnestly, and 
persistently she toiled is partially revealed in the little work 
published by some of her associates, under the title of " Hospital 
Transports/^ but was fully known only by those who shared in 
her labors, and those who were the recipients of her kind atten- 
tions. One of these, a private in the Sixteenth ISTew York Regi- 
ment (her husband's regiment), and who had been under her care 
on one of the Commission's transports at White House, expressed 
his gratitude in the following graceful lines • 

" From old St. Paul till now 
Of honorable women, not a few 
Have left their golden ease, in love to do 
The saintly work which Christ-like hearts pursue. 

"And such an one art thou? God's fair apostle, 
Bearing his love in war's horrific train ; 
Thy blessed feet follow its ghastly pain, 
And misery and death without disdain. 

"To one borne from the sullen battle's roar, 
Dearer the greeting of thy gentle eyes 
When he, a-weary, torn, and bleeding lies, 
Than all the glory that the victors prize. 

"When peace shall come and homes shall smile again, 
A thousand soldier hearts, in northern climes, 
Shall tell their little children in their rhymes 
Of the sweet saints who blessed tlie old war times." 

On the Chickahominy, June 12th, 1862. 

Impaired health, the result of the excessive labors of that battle 
summer, prevented Mrs. Howland from further active service in 
the field; but whenever her health permitted, she visited and 
labored in the hospitals around Wasliington, and her thoughtful 
attention and words of encouragement to the women nurses ap- 
pointed by Miss Dix, and receiving a paltry stipend from the 
Government, were most gratefully appreciated by those self- 
denying, hard-working, and often sorely-tried women—many of 



826 woman's work in the civil war. 

them the peers in culture, refinement and intellect of any lady in 
the land, but treated with harshness and discourtesy by boy- 
surgeons, who lacked the breeding or instincts of the gentleman. 
Her genuine modesty and humility have led her, as well as her 
sisters, to deprecate any notoriety or public notice of their work, 
which they persist in regarding as unworthy of record; but so will 
it not be regarded by the soldiers who have been rescued from 
inevitable death by their persistent toil, nor by a nation grateful 
for the services rendered to its brave defenders. 

Mrs. l\obert S. Howland was the wife of a clergyman, and an 
earnest worker in the hospitals and in the Metropolitan Sanitary 
Fair, and her friends believed that her over-exertion in the prep- 
aration and attendance upon that fair, contributed to shorten a 
life as precious and beautiful as was ever offered upon the altar 
of patriotism. Mrs. Howland possessed rare poetic genius, and 
some of her effusions, suggested by incidents of army or hospital 
life, are worthy of preservation as among the choicest gems of 
poetry elicited by the war. ^^A Rainy Day in Camp,'' "A Mes- 
sage from the Army," etc., are poems which many of our readers 
will recall with interest and pleasure. A shorter one of equal 
merit and popularity, we copy not only for its brevity, but because 
it expresses so fully the perfect peace which filled her heart as 
completely as it did that of the subject of the poem: 



IN THE HOSPITAL. 

" S. S , a Massachusetts Sergeant, worn out with heavy raarclies, wounds 

and camp disease, died in General Hospital, in November, 1863, in 'per- 
fect peace.' Some who witnessed daily his wonderful sweet patience and con- 
tent, through great languor and weariness, fancied sometimes they 'could 
already see the brilliant particles of a halo in the air about his head.' 

"I lay me down to sleep, 

With little thought or care, 
Whether my waking find 
Me here — or There! 



THE MISSES WOOLSEY. 327 

"A bowing, burdened head, 
That only asks to rest, 
Unquestioning, upon 
A loving Breast. 

"My good right-hand forgets 
Its cunning now — 
To march the weary march 
I know not how. 

"T am not eager, bold, 

Nor strong — all that is past: 
I am ready not to do 
At last — at last! 

"My half-day's work is done, 
And this is all my part; 
I give a patient God 
My patient heart. 

"And grasp his banner still. 
Though all its blue be dim; 
These stripes, no less than stars, 
Lead after Him." 

Mrs. Howland died in the summer of 1864. 

Miss Georgiana M. Woolsey, was one of the most efficient 
ladies connected with the Hospital Transport service, where her 
constant cheerfulness, her ready wit, her never failing resources 
of contrivance and management in any emergency, made the 
severe labor seem light, and by keeping up the spirits of the 
entire party, prevented the scenes of suffering constantly presented 
from rendering them morbid or depressed. She took the position 
of assistant superintendent of the Portsmouth Grove General 
Hospital, in September, 1862, when her friend. Miss Wormeley, 
became superintendent, and remained there till the spring of 
1863, was actively engaged in the care of the wounded at Fal- 
mouth after the battle of Chancellorsville, was on the field soon 
after the battle of Gettysburg, and wrote that charming and 
graphic account of the labors of herself and a friend at Gettys- 



328 

burg in the service of the Sanitary Commission which was so 
widely circulated^ and several times reprinted in English reviews 
and journals. We cannot refrain from introducing it as one of 
those narratives of actual philanthropic work of which we have 
altogether too few. 

THREE WEEKS AT GETTYSBURG. 

"July, 1863. . 

"Dear : What we did at Gettysburg, for the three weeks 

w^e were there, you will want to know. ^We/ are Mrs.* 

and I, who, happening to be on hand at the right moment, gladly 
fell in with the proposition to do what we could at the Sanitary 
Commission Lodge after the battle. There w^ere, of course, the 
agents of the Commission, already on the field, distributing sup- 
plies to the hospitals, and working night and day among the 
wounded. I cannot pretend to tell you what was done by all the 
big wheels of the concern, but only how two of the smallest ones 
went round, and what turned up in the going. 

" Twent}^-four hours we were in making the journey between 
Baltimore and Gettysburg, places only four hours apart in ordi- 
nary running time; and this will give you some idea of the diffi- 
culty there was in bringing up supplies when the fighting was 
over, and of the delays in transporting wounded. Coming toward 
the town at this crawling rate, we passed some fields where the 
fences were down and the ground slightly tossed up: ^That's 
where Kil]:>atrick's Cavalry-men fought the rebels,' some one 
said; ^and close by that barn a rebel soldier was found day before 
yesterday, sitting dead' — no one to help, poor soul, — 'near the 
whole city full.' The railroad bridge broken up by the enemy, 
Government had not rebuilt as yet, and we stopped two miles 
from the town, to find that, as usual, just where the Government 
had left off the Commission came in. There stood their tempo- 
rary lodge and kitchen, and here, hobbling out of their tents, 



Her mother, Mrs. Woolsey. 



THE MISSES WOOLSEY. 329 

came the wounded men who had made their way down from the 
corps-hospitals^ expecting to leave at once in the return-cars. 

^^ This is the way the thing was managed at first : The surgeons 
left in care of the wounded three or four miles out from the town^ 
went up and down among the men in the morning, and said, 
^Any of you boys who can make your way to the cars can go to 
Baltimore/ So oif start all who think they feel well enough ; 
anything better than the ^hospitals/ so called, for the first few 
days after a battle. Once the men have the surgeons' permission 
to go, they are off; and there may be an interval of a day, or two 
days, should any of them be too weak to reach the train in time, 
during which these poor fellow^s belong to no one, — the hospital 
at one end, the railroad at the other, — with far more than a chance 
of falling through between the two. The Sanitary Commission 
knew this would be so of necessity, and, coming in, made a con- 
necting link between these two ends. 

"For the first few days the worst cases only came down in 
ambulances from the hospitals; hundreds of fellows hobbled 
along as best they could in heat and dust, for hours, slowly toil- 
ing; and many hired farmers' wagons, as hard as the farmers' 
fists themselves, and were jolted down to the railroad, at three or 
four dollars the man. Think of the disappointment of a soldier, 
sick, body and heart, to find, at the end of this miserable journey, 
that his effort to get away, into which he had put all his remain- 
ing stock of strength, was useless; that ^the cars had gone,' or 
' the cars were full ;' that while he was coming others had stepped 
down before him, and that he must turn all the weary way back 
again, or sleep on the road-side till the next train ' to-morrow !' 
Think what this ivould have been, and you are ready to appre- 
ciate the relief and comfort that was. No men were turned back. 
You fed and you sheltered them just when no one else could have 
done so; and out of the boxes and barrels of good and nourish- 
ing things, which you people at home had supplied, we took all 

that was needed. Some of you sent a stove (that is, the money to 
42 ^ 



330 

get it), some of you the beef-stock, some of you the milk and 
fresh bread; and all of you would have been thankful that you 
had done so, could you have seen the refreshment and comfort 
received through these things. 

" As soon as the men hobbled up to the tents, good hot soup 
was given all round; and that over, their wounds were dressed, 
— for the gentlemen of the Commission are cooks or surgeons, as 
occasion demands, — and, finally, with their blankets spread over 
the straw, the men stretched themselves out and were happy and 
contented till morning, and the next train. 

^' On the day that the railroad bridge was repaired, we moved 
up to the depot, close by the town, and had things in perfect 
order; a first-rate camping-ground, in a large field directly by 
the track, with unlimited supply of delicious cool water. Here 
we set up two stoves, with four large boilers, always kept full of 
soup and coffee, watched by four or five black men, who did the 
cooking, under our direction, and sang (not under our direction) 
at the top of their voices all day, — 

'Oh darkies, hab you seen my Massa?' 
' When this cruel war is over.'' 

Then we had three large hospital tents, holding about thirty-five 
each, a large camp-meeting supply tent, where barrels of goods 
were stored, and our own smaller tent, fitted up with tables, 
where jelly-pots, and bottles of all kinds of good syrups, black- 
berry and black currant, stood in rows. Barrels were ranged 
round the tent- walls; shirts, drawers, dressing-gowns, socks, and 
slippers (I wish we had had more of the latter), rags and ban- 
dages, each in its own place on one side; on the other, boxes of 
tea, coifee, soft crackers, tamarinds, cherry brandy, etc. Over the 
kitchen, and over this small supply-tent, we women rather 
reigned, and filled up our wants by requisition on the Commis- 
sion's depot. By this time there had arrived a ^delegation' of 
just the right kind from Canandaigua, New York, with surgeons' 



THE MISSES WOOLSEY. 331 

dressers and attendants, bringing a first-rate supply of necessities 
and comforts for the wounded, which they handed over to the 
Commission. 

^^ Twice a day the trains left for Baltimore or Harrisburg, and 
twice a day we fed all the wounded who arrived for them. Things 
were systematized now, and the men came down in long ambu- 
lance trains to the cars ; baggage-cars they were, filled with straw 
for the wounded to lie on, and broken open at either end to let in 
the air. A Government surgeon was always present to attend to 
the careful lifting of the soldiers from ambulance to car. Many 
of the men could get along very nicely, holding one foot up, and 
taking great jumps on their crutches. The latter were a great 
comfort; we had a nice supply at the Lodge; and they traveled 
up and down from the tents to the cars daily. Only occasionally 
did we dare let a pair go on with some very lame soldier, who 
begged for them; we needed them to help the new arrivals each 
day, and trusted to the men being supplied at the hospitals at the 
journey's end. Pads and crutches are a standing want, — pads 
particularly. We manufactured them out of the rags we had, 
stuffed with sawdust from brandy-boxes; and with half a sheet 

and some soft straw, Mrs. made a poor dying boy as easy 

as his sufferings would permit. Poor young fellow, he was so 
grateful to her for washing and feeding and comforting him. He 
was too ill to bear the journey, and went from our tent to the 
cliiu'ch liospital, and from the church to his grave, which would 
have been coffinless but for the care of ; for the Quarter- 
master's Department was overtaxed, and for many days our dead 
were simply wrapped in their blankets and put into the earth. 
It is a soldierly way, after all, of lying wrapped in the old war- 
worn blanket, — the little dust returned to dust. 

^'When the surgeons had the wounded all placed, with as 
much comfort as seemed possible under the circumstances, on 
board tlie train, our detail of men would go from car to car, with 
soup made of beef-stock or fresh meat, full of potatoes, turnips, 



332 

cabbage, and rice, with fresh bread and coffee, and, when stimu- 
lants were needed, with ale, milk-punch, or brandy. AVater-pails 
were in great demand for use in the cars on the journey, and also 
empty bottles to take the place of canteens. All our whisky and 
brandy bottles were washed and filled up at the spring, and the 
boys wxnt off carefully hugging their extemporized canteens, 
from which they would wet their wounds, or refresh themselves 
till the journey ended. I do not think that a man of the sixteen 
thousand who were transported during our stay, went from 
Gettysburg^ without a o^ood meal. Rebels and Unionists too^ether, 
they all had it, and were pleased and satisfied. ^Have you 
friends in the army, madam?' a rebel soldier, lying on the floor 
of the car, said to me, as I gave him some milk. ^ Yes, my bro- 
ther is on 's staff.' ^ I thought so, ma'am. You can always 

tell; when people are good to soldiers they are sure to have 
friends in the army.' ^ We are rebels, you know, ma'am,' another 
said. 'Do you treat rebels sof It was strange to see tbe good 
brotherly feeling come over the soldiers, our own and the rebels, 
when side by side they lay in our tents. ' Hullo, boys ! this is 
the pleasantest way to meet, isn't it? We are better friends 
when we are as close as this than a little farther off.' And then 
they w^ould go over the battles together, 'We were here,' and 
'you were there,' in the friendliest way. 

"After each train of cars daily, for the three weeks we were in 
Gettysburg, trains of ambulances arrived to© late — men who must 
spend the day with us until the five P. M. cars went, and men 
too late for the five P. M. train, who must spend the night till 
the ten A. M. cars went. All the men who came in this way, 
under our own immediate and particular attention, were given 
the best we had of care and food. The surgeon in charge of om' 
camp, with his most faithful dresser and attendants, looked after 
all their wounds, Ayhich were often in a shocking state, particu- 
larly among the rebels. Every evening and morning they were 
dressed. Often the men would say, ' That feels good. I have n't 



THE MISSES WOOLSEY. 333 

had my wound so well dressed since I was hurt. Something 
cool to drink is the first thing asked, for after the long, dusty 
drive -, and pailfuls of tamarinds and water, ^a beautiful drink/ 
the men used to say, disappeared rapidly among them. 

"After the men^s wounds were attended to, we went round 
giving them clean clothes ; had basins and soap and towels, and 
followed these with socks, slippers, shirts, drawers, and those 
coveted dressing-gowns. Such pride as they felt in them ! com- 
paring colors, and smiling all over as they lay in clean and com- 
fortable rows, ready for supper, — ^ on dress parade,' they used to 
say. And then the milk, particularly if it were boiled and had 
a little whisky and sugar, and the bread, with butter on it, and 
jelly on the butter : how good it all was, and how lucky we felt 
ourselves in havins^ the immense satisfaction of distributino^ these 
things, which all of you, hard at work in villages and cities, were 
getting ready and sending off, in faith. 

" Canandaigua sent cologne with its other supplies, which 
went right to the noses and hearts of the men. ^That is good, 
now/ — Til take some of that/ — Svorth a penny a sniff/ ^that 
kinder gives one life/ — and so on, all round the tents, as we 
tipped the bottles up on the clean handkerchiefs some one had 
sent, and when they were gone, over squares of cotton, on which 
the perfume took the place of hem, — ^just as good, ma'am.' We 
varied our dinners with custard and baked rice puddings, scram- 
bled eggs, codfish hash, corn-starch, and ahvays as much soft 
bread, tea, cofPee, or milk as they wanted. Two Massachusetts 
boys I especially remember for the satisfaction with which they 
ate their pudding. I carried a second plateful up to the cars, 
after they had been put in, and fed one of them till he was sure 
he had had enough. Young fellows they were, lying side by 
side, one with a right and one with a left arm gone. 

" The Gettysburg women were kind and faithful to the wounded 
and their friends, and the town was full to overflowing of both. 
The first day, wlien Mrs. and I reached the ])lace, we lite- 



334 woman's work i:n the civil war. 

rally begged our bread from door to door; but the kind woman 
who at last gave us dinner would take no pay for it. 'Xo, 
ma'am, I should n't wish to have that sin on my soul when the 
war is over.' She, as well as others, had fed the strangers flock- 
ing into town daily, sometimes over fifty of them for each meal, 
and all for love and nothing for reward ; and one night we forced 
a reluctant confession from our hostess that she was meaning to 
sleep on the floor that we might have a bed, her whole house 
being full. Of course we could n't allow this self-sacrifice, and 
hunted up some other place to stay in. We did her no good, 
however, for we afterwards found that the bed was given up that 
night to some other stranger who arrived late and tired: ^An old 
lady, you know; and I couldn't let an old lady sleep on the 
floor.' Such acts of kindness and self-denial were almost entirely 
confined to the women. 

^^ Few good things can be said of the Gettysburg farmers, and 
I only use Scripture language in calling them ^ evil beasts.' One 
of this kind came creeping into our camp three weeks after the 
battle. He lived five miles only from the town, and had ^ never 
seen a rebel.' He heard we had some of them, and had come 
down to see them. ' Boys,' we said, — marching him into the tent 
which happened to be full of rebels that day, Avaiting for the 
train, — ' Boys, here's a man who never saw a rebel in his life, and 
wants to look at you ;' and there he stood with his mouth wide 
open, and there they lay in rows, laughing at him, stupid old 

Dutchman. ^And why haven't you seen a rebel?' Mrs. 

said ; ' why didn't you take your gun and help to drive them out 
of your toAvn ?' ' A feller might'er got hit ! ' — which reply was 
quite too much for the rebels ; they roared with laughter at him, 
up and down the tent. 

" One woman we saw, who was by no means Dutch, and whose 
pluck helped to redeem the other sex. She lived in a little house 
close up by the field where the hardest fighting Avas done, — a red- 
cheeked, strong, country girl. ' Were you frightened when the 



THE MISSES WOOLSEY. 335 

shells began flying ? ' ^ Well, no. You see we was all a-baking 
bread around here for the soldiers, and had our dough a-rising. 
The neighbors they ran into their cellars, but I couldn't leave my 
bread. When the first shell came in at the window and crashed 
through the room, an officer came and said, ^ You had better get 
out of this ;' but I told him I could not leave my bread ; and I 
stood working it till the third shell came through, and then I 
went down cellar; but' (triumphantly) ^I left my bread in the 
oven.' ^ And why didn't you go before?' ^ Oh, you see, if I had, 
the rebels would 'a' come in and daubed the dough all over the place.' 
And here she had stood, at the risk of unwelcome plums in her 
loaves, while great holes (which we saw) were made by shot and 
shell through and through the room in which she was working. 

" The streets of Gettysburg were filled with the battle. People 
thought and talked of nothing else ; even the children showed 
their little spites by calling to each other, ^ Here, you rebel ;' and 
mere scraps of boys amused themselves with percussion-caps and 
hammers. Hundreds of old muskets were piled on the pave- 
ments, the men who shouldered them a week before, lying under- 
ground now, or helping to fill the long trains of ambulances on 
their way from the field. The private houses of the town were, 
many of them, hospitals ; the little red flags hung from the upper 
windows. Beside our own men at the Lodge, we all had soldiers 
scattered about whom we could help from our supplies ; and nice 
little puddings and jellies, or an occasional chicken, were a great 
treat to men condemned by their wounds to stay in Gettysburg, 
and obliged to live on what the empty town could provide. 
There was a colonel in a shoe-shop, a captain just up the street, 
and a private round the corner whose young sister had possessed 
herself of him, overcoming the military rules in some way, and 
carrying him ofl* to a little room, all by himself, where I found 
her doing her best with very little. She came afterward to our 
tent and got for him clean clothes, and good food, and all he 
wanted, and was perfectly happy in being his cook, washer- 



336 woman's work in the civil wae. 

woman, medical cadet, and nurse. Besides such as these, we 
occasionally carried from our supplies something to the churches, 
which were filled with sick and wounded, and where men were 
dying, — men whose strong patience it was very hard to bear, — 
dying with thoughts of the old home far away, saying, as last 
words, for the women watching there and waiting with a patience 
equal in its strength, ^ Tell her I love her/ 

^' Late one afternoon, too late for the cars, a train of ambulances 
arrived at our Lodge with over one hundred wounded rebels, to 
be cared for through the night. Only one among them seemed 
too weak and faint to take anything. He was badly hurt, and 
failing. I went to him after his wound was dressed, and found 
him lying on his blanket stretched over the straw, — a fair-haired, 
blue-eyed young lieutenant, with a face innocent enough for one 
of our own New England boys. I could not think of him as a 
rebel; he was too near heaven for that. He wanted nothing, — 
had not been willing to eat for days, his comrades said; but I 
coaxed him to try a little milk gruel, made nicely with lemon 
and brandy; and one of the satisfactions of our three weeks is 
the remembrance of the empty cup I took away afterward, and 
his perfect enjoyment of that supper. ^It was so good, the best 
thing he had had since he was wounded,' — and he thanked me 
so much, and talked about his ^good supper' for hours. Poor 
fellow, he had had no care, and it was a surprise and pleasure to 
find himself thought of; so, in a pleased, childlike way, he talked 
about it till midnight, the attendant told me, as long as he spoke 
of anything; for at midnight the change came, and from that 
time he only thought of the old days before he was a soldier, 
when he sang hymns in his father's church. He sang them now 
again in a clear, sweet voice. 'Lord, have mercy upon me;' and 
then songs without words — a sort of low intoning. His father 
was a Lutheran clergyman in South Carolina, one of the rebels 
told us in the morning, when we went into the tent, to find him 
sliding out of our care. All day long we watched him, — some- 



THE MISSES WOOLSEY. 337 

times fighting his battles over, often singing his Lutheran chants, 
till, in at the tent-door, close to which he lay, looked a rebel sol- 
dier, just arrived with other prisoners. He started when he saw 
the lieutenant, and quickly kneeling down by him, called, ^ Henry ! 
Henry !' But Henry was looking at some one a great way off, 
and could not hear him. ^Do you know this soldier?' we said. 
^ Oh, yes, ma'am ; and his brother is wounded and a prisoner, too, 
in the cars, now.' Two or three men started after him, found 
him, and half carried him from the cars to our tent. ^ Henry' 
did not know him, though; and he threw himself down by his 
side on the straw, and for the rest of the day lay in a sort of 
apathy, without speaking, except to assure himself that he could 
stay with his brother, without the risk of being separated from 
his fellow-prisoners. And there the brothers lay, and there we 
strangers sat watching and listening to the strong, clear voice, 
singing, ^Lord, have mercy upon me.' The Lord had mercy; 
and at sunset I put my hand on the lieutenant's heart, to find it 
still. All night the brother lay close against the coffin, and in 
the morning went away with his comrades, leaving us to bury 
Henry, having ^confidence;' but first thanking us for what we 
had done, and giving us all that he had to show his gratitude, — 
the palmetto ornament from his brother's cap and a button from 
his coat. Dr. W. read the burial service that morning at the 

grave, and wrote his name on the little head-board : 

' Lieutenant Ranch, Fourteenth Regiment South Carolina Volun- 
teers.' 

" In the field where we buried him, a number of colored freed- 
men, working for Government on the railroad, had their camp, 
and every night they took their recreation, after the heavy work 
of the day was over, in prayer-meetings. Such an 'inferior race,' 
you know ! We went over one night and listened for an hour, 
while they sang, collected under the fly of a tent, a table in the 
middle where the leader sat, and benches all round the sides for 
the congregation — men only, — all very black and very earnest. 
4a 



338 

They prayed with all their souls, as only black men and slaves 
can ; for themselves and for tlie dear, white people who had come 
over to the meeting ; and for ' Massa Lincoln/ for whom they 
seemed to have a reverential affection, — some of them a sort of 
worship, which confused Father Abraham and Massa Abraham 
in one general cry for blessings. Whatever else they asked for, 
they must have strength, and comfort, and blessing for ^ Massa 
Lincoln/ Very little care was taken of these poor men. Those 
who were ill during our stay were looked after by one of the 
officers of the Commission. They were grateful for every little 

thing. Mrs. went into the town and hunted up several 

dozen bright handkerchiefs, hemmed them, and sent them over 
to be distributed the next night after meeting. They were put 
on the table in the tent, and one by one, the men came up to 
get them. Purple, and blue, and yellow the handkerchiefs were, 
and the desire of every man's heart fastened itself on a yellow 
one ; they politely made way for each other, though^ — one man 
standing back to let another pass up first, although he ran the 
risk of seeing the particular pumpkin-color that riveted his eyes 
taken from before them. When the distribution is over, each 
man tied his head up in his handkerchief, and they sang one 
more hymn, keeping time all round, with blue and purple and 
yellow nods, and thanking and blessing the white people in ^ their 
basket and in their store,' as much as if the cotton handkerchiefs 
had all been gold leaf. One man came over to our tent next 
day, to say, 'Missus, was it you who sent me that present? I 
never had anything so beautiful in all my life before / and he 
only had a blue one, too. 

'^ Among our wounded soldiers one night, came an elderly 
man, sick, wounded, and crazy, singing and talking about home. 
We did what we could for him, and pleased him greatly with a 
present of a red flannel shirt, drawers, and red calico dressing- 
gown, all of which he needed, and in which he dressed himself 
up, and then wrote a letter to his wife, made it into a little book 



THE MISSES WOOLSEY. 339 

with gingham covers, and gave it to one of the gentlemen to mail 
for him. The next morning he was sent on with the company 
from the Lodge ; and that evening two tired Avomen came into 
our camp — his wife and sister, who hurried on from their home 
to meet him, arriving just too late. Fortunately we had the 
queer little gingham book to identify him by, and Avhen some 
one said, "It is the man, you know, who screamed so,' the poor 
wife was certain about him. He had been crazy before the war, 
but not for two years, now, she said. He had been fretting. for 
home since he was hurt ; and when the doctor told him there was 
no chance of his being sent there, he lost heart, and wrote to his 
wife to come and carry him away. It seemed almost hopeless for 
two lone women, who had never been out of their own little 
town, to succeed in finding a soldier among so many, sent in so 
many different directions; but we helped them as we could, and 
started them on their journey the next morning, back on their 
track, to use their common sense and Yankee privilege of ques- 
tioning. 

"A week after, Mrs. had a letter full of gratitude, and 

saying that the husband was found and secured for home. That 
same night we had had in our tents two fathers, with their 
wounded sons, and a nice old German mother with her boy. She 
had come in from Wisconsin, and brought with her a patchwork 
bed-quilt for her son, thinking he might have lost his blanket; 
and there he laid all covered up in his quilt, looking so homelike, 
and feeling so, too, no doubt, with his good old mother close at 
his side. She seemed bright and happy, — had three sons in the 
Army, — one had been killed, — this one wounded ; yet she was so 
pleased with the tents, and the care she saw taken there of the 
soldiers, that, while taking her tea from a barrel-head as table, 
she said, ^ Indeed, if she was a man, she'd be a soldier too, right 
ofP.' 

" For this temporary sheltering and feeding of all these wounded 
men, Government could make no provision. There was nothing 



340 woman's work in the civil war. 

for them, if too late for the cars, except the open field and hun- 
ger, in preparation for their fatiguing journey. It is expected 
when the cars are ready that the men will be promptly sent to 
meet them, and Government cannot provide for mistakes and 
delays; so that, but for the Sanitary Commission's Lodge and 
comfortable supplies, for which the wounded are indebted to the 
hard workers at home, men badly hurt must have suffered night 
and day, while waiting for the ^next train.^ We had on an 
average sixty of such men each night for three weeks under our 
care,— sometimes one hundred, sometimes only thirty; and with 
the ^ delegation,' and the help of other gentlemen volunteers, who 
all worked devotedly for the men, the whole thing was a great 
success, and you and all of us can't help being thankful that we 
had a share, however small, in making it so. Sixteen thousand 
good meals were given; hundreds of men kept through the day, 
and twelve hundred sheltered at night, their wounds dressed, 
their supper and breakfast secured — rebels and all. You will 
not, I am sure, regret that these most wretched men, these ^ene- 
mies,' ^sick and in prison,' were helped and cared for through 
your supplies, though, certainly, they were not in your minds 
when you packed your barrels and boxes. The clothing we 
reserved for our own men, except now and then when a shivering 
rebel needed it; but in feeding them we could make no distinc- 
tions. 

'^Our three weeks were coming to an end; the work of trans- 
porting the wounded was nearly over; twice daily we had filled 
and emptied our tents, and twice fed the trains before the long 
journey. The men came in slowly at the last, — a lieutenant, all 
the way from Oregon, being among the very latest. He came 
down from the corps hospitals (now greatly improved), having 
lost one foot, poor fellow, dressed in a full suit of the Commission's 
cotton clothes, just as bright and as cheerful as the first man, and 
all the men that we received had been. We never heard a com- 
plaint. ^ Would he like a little nice soup?' ^Well, no, thank 



THE MISSES WOOLSEY. 341 

you, ma^am;' hesitating and polite. ^You have a long ride 
before you, and had better take a little; I'll just bring it and you 
can try/ So the good, thick soup came. He took a very little 
in the spoon to please me, and afterwards the whole cupful to 
please himself. He ^did not think it was this kind of soup I 
meant. He had some in camp, and did not think he cared for 
any more; his ^^cook^' was a very small boy, though, who just 
put some meat in a little water and stirred it round.' ' Would , 
you like a handkerchief?' and I produced our last one, with a 
hem and cologne too. ^Oh, yes; that is what I need; I have 
lost mine, and was just borrowing this gentleman's.' So the 
lieutenant, the last man, was made comfortable, thanks to all of 
you, though he had but one foot to carry him on his long journey 
home. 

"Four thousand soldiers, too badly hurt to be moved, were 
still left in Gettysburg, cared for kindly and well at the large, 
new^ Government hospital, with a Sanitary Commission attach- 
ment. 

" Our work was over, our tents were struck, and we came away 
after a flourish of trumpets from two military bands who filed 
down to our door, and gave us a farewell ^ Red, white, and blue.' " 

One who knows Miss Woolsey well says of her, "Her sense, 
energy, lightness, and quickness of action; her thorough know- 
ledge of the work, her amazing yet simple resources, her shy 
humility which made her regard her own work with impatience, 
almost with contempt — all this and much else make her memory 
a source of strength and tenderness which nothing can take away." 
Elsewhere, the same writer adds, " Strength and sweetness, sound 
practical sense, deep humility, merriment, playfulness, a most 
ready wit, an educate^ intelligence — were among her character- 
istics. Her work I consider to have been better than any which 
I saw in the service. It was thorough, but accomplished rapidly. 
She saw a need before others saw it, and she supplied it often by 
some ingenious contrivance which answered every purpose, though 



312 

no one but Georgj would ever have dreamt of it. Her pity for 
the sufferings of the men was something pathetic in itself, but it 
was never morbid, never unwise, never derived from her own 
shock at the sight, always practical and healthy/^ Miss Wool- 
sey remained in the service through the war, a part of the time in 
charge of hospitals, but during Grant's great campaign of the spring, 
summer, and autumn of 1864, she was most effectively engaged 
at the front, or rather at the great depots for the wounded, at 
Belle Plain, Port Poyal, Fredericksburg, White House, and City 
Point. Miss Jane S. Woolsey, also served in general hospitals 
as lady superintendent until the close of the war, and afterward 
transferred her efforts to the work among the Freedmen at Rich- 
mond, Virginia. 

A cousin of these ladies. Miss Sarah C. Woolsey, daughter of 
President Woolsey of Yale College, was also engaged during the 
greater part of the war in hospital and other philanthropic labors 
for the soldiers. She was for ten months assistant superintendent 
of the Portsmouth Grove General Hospital, and her winning 
manners, her tender and skilful care of the patients, and her 
unwearied efforts to do them good, made her a general favorite. 



ANNA MARIA ROSS 




NNA MARIA ROSS, the subject of this sketch, was 
a native of Philadelphia, in which city the greater part 
of her life was spent, and in which, on the 22d of De- 
cember, 1863, she passed to her eternal rest. 

It was a very beautiful life of Avhich we have now to speak — 
a life of earnest activity in every work of benevolence and Chris- 
tian kindness. She had gathered about her, in her native city, 
scores of devoted friends, who loved her in life, and mourned her 
in death with the sentiments of a true bereavement. 

Miss Ross was patriotic by inheritance, as well as through per- 
sonal loyalty. Her maternal relatives were largely identified 
with the war of American Independence. Her mother's uncle, 
Jacob Root, held a captain's commission in the Continental army, 
and it is related of her great grandmother that she served volun- 
tarily as a moulder in an establishuient where bullets were manu- 
factured to be used in the cause of freedom. 

Her mother's name was Mary Root, a native of Chester County, 
Pennsylvania. Her father was AYilliam Ross, who emigrated 
early in life from the county of Derry, Ireland. There may have 
been nothing in her early manifestations of character to foreshow 
the noble womanhood into which she grew. There remains, at 
any rate, a small record of her earliest years. The wonderful 
powers which she developed in mature womanhood possess a 
greater interest for those who know her chiefly in connection with 

343 



344 

the labors which gave her so just a claim to the title of "The 
Soldier's Friend/' 

Endowed by nature with great vigor of mind and uncommon 
activity and energy, of striking and commanding personal appear- 
ance and pleasing address, she had been, before the war, remarkably 
successful in the prosecution of those works of charity and benevo- 
lence which made her life a blessing to mankind. Well-known 
to the public-spirited and humane of her native city, her claims to 
attention were fully recognized, and her appeals in behalf of the 
needy and suffering were never allowed to pass unheeded. 

" I have little hope of success," she said once to her companion, 
in going upon an errand of mercy: "yet we may get one hundred 
dollars. The lady we are about to visit is not liberal, though 
wealthy. Let us pray that her heart may be opened to us. Many 
of my most earnest prayers have been made while hurrying along 
the street on such errands as this." The lady gave her three 
hundred dollars. 

On one occasion she was at the house of a friend, w^hen a 
family was incidentally mentioned as being in great poverty and 
affliction. The father had been attacked with what is known as 
"black small pox," and was quite destitute of the comforts and 
attentions which his situation required, some of the members of 
his own family having left the house from fear of the infection. 
The quick sympathies of Miss Ross readily responded to this tale 
of want and neglect. " While God gives me health and strength," 
she earnestly exclaimed, "no man shall thus suffer!" With no 
more delay than was required to place in a basket articles of 
necessity and comfort she hastened to the miserable dwelling; nor 
did she leave the poor sufferer until he was beyond the reach of 
human aid forever. And her thoughtful care ceased not even 
here. From her own friends she sought and obtained the means 
of giving him a respectable burial. 

The lady to whom the writer is indebted for the above incident, 
relates that on the day when all that was mortal of Anna Maria 



ANNA MARIA ROSS. 345 

Ross was consigned to its kindred dust, as she was entering a 
street-car, the conductor remarked, '^ I suppose you have been to 
see the last of Miss Ross." Upon her replying in the affirmative, 
he added, while tears flowed down his cheeks, "I did not know 
her, but she watched over my wife for four weeks when she had 
a terrible sickness. She was almost an entire stranger to lier 
wdien she came and offered her assistance." 

Her work for the soldier was chiefly performed in connection 
with the institution known as the Cooper Shop Hospital, a branch 
of the famous Cooper Shop Refreshment Saloon, for Soldiers. Miss 
Ross was appointed Lady Principal of this Institution, and devoted 
herself to it with an energy that never wearied. Day and night 
she was at her post — watching while others slept, dressing with 
her own hands the most loathsome wounds ; winning the love and 
admiration of all with whom she was associated. Her tasks were 
arduous, her sympathies were drawn upon to the utmost, her re- 
sponsibilities were great. 

One who knew her well, and often saw her within the walls 
of the " Cooper Shop," thus gives us some incidents of her work 
there. The benevolence expressed in her glowing countenance, 
and the words of hearty welcome with which she greeted a hum- 
ble coadjutor in her loving labors, will never be forgotten. It 
was impossible not to be impressed at once by the tender earnest- 
ness with which she engaged in her self-imposed duties, and her 
active interest in evervthins^ which concerned the well-beino^ of 
those committed to her charge. When they were about to leave 
her watchful care forever, a sister's thoughtfulness was exhibited 
in her preparations for their comfort and convenience. The 
wardrobe of the departing soldier was carefully inspected, and 
everything needful was supplied. It was her custom also to fur- 
nish to each one Avho left, a sum of money, ^'that he might have 
something of his own" to meet any unexpected necessity by the 
way. And if the donation-box at the entrance of the hospital 
chanced to be empty, her own purse made good the deficiency. 

44 



346 woman's work in the civil war. 

The writer well remembers the anxious countenance with which 
she was met one morning by Miss Ross^ when about taking her 
place for the day's duty. "I am so sorry!" was her exclamation. 
"When C left for Virginia last night I forgot, in the confu- 
sion^ to give him money; and I am afraid that he has nothing 
of his own, for he had not received his p«ay. I thought of it 
after I was in bed, and it disturbed my sleep." 

The tenderness of Miss Ross's nature was never more touch- 

ingly exhibited than in the case of Lieutenant B , of Saratoga, 

New York. He was brought to the hospital by his father for a 
few days' rest before proceeding to his home. Mortally wounded, 
he failed so rapilly that he could not be removed. During two 
days and nights of agonizing suffering Miss Ross scarcely left his 
side, and while she bathed his burning brow and moistened his 
parched lips she mingled with these tender offices words of Chris- 
tian hope and consolation. "Call me Anna," she said, "and tell 
me all Avhich your heart prompts you to say." And as life ebbed 
away he poured into her sympathizing ear the confidences which 
his mother, alas! could not receive. With tearful eyes and sor- 
rowing heart this new-found friend watched by him to the last — 
then closed the heavy eyes, and smoothed the raven locks, and 
sent the quiet form, lovely even in death, to her who waited its 
arrival in bitter anguish. 

To those who best knew the subject of this sketch, it seems a 
hopeless task to enumerate the instances of unselfish devotion to 
the good of others ^vith which that noble life was filled. It was 
the same tale again and again repeated. Alike the pain, the 
anxiety, the care; alike the support, the encouragement, the con- 
solation. No marvel was it that the sinking soldier, far from 
home and friends, mistook the gentle ministry for that which 
marks earth's strongest tie, and at her approach whispered 
" mother." 

It would be impossible to enumerate a tithe of the special 
instances of her kindly ministrations, but there are some that so 



ANNA MAEIA EOSS. 347 

vividly illustrate prominent points in her character that we can- 
not refrain from the record. One of these marked traits was her 
perseverance in the accomplishment of any plan for the good of 
her charges, and may well be mentioned here. 

For a long time an Eastern soldier, named D , was an 

inmate of her hospital, and as, though improving, his recovery 
was slow, and it seemed unlikely that he would soon be fit for 
service in the ranks, she got him the appointment of hospital 
steward, and he remained where he could still have care. 

After the battle of Gettysburg he relapsed, and from over- work 
and over-wrought feeling, sank into almost hopeless depression. 
The death of a beloved child, and an intense passionate longing 
to revisit his home and family, aided this deep grief, and gave it 
a force and power that threatened to deprive him of life or reason. 
It was at this crisis that with her accustomed energy Miss Ross 
directed all her efforts toward restoring him to his family. After 
the preliminary steps had been taken she applied to the captain 
of a Boston steamer, but he refused to receive a sick passenger on 
account of the want of suitable accommodations. The case was 
urgent. He must go or die. ^^ There is no room," repeated the 
captain. 

"Give him a place upon the floor,'^ was the rejoinder, "and I 
will furnish everything needful.'^ "But a sick man cannot have 
proper attendance under such circumstances," persisted the cap- 
tain. "I will go with him if necessary," she replied, "and will 
take the entire charge of his comfort." " Miss Ross, I am sorry 
to refuse you, but I cannot comply with your request. This an- 
swer must be final." 

What was to be done? The unsuccessful pleader covered her 
face with her hands for a few moments; then raising her head 

said, slowly and sadly, " Captain , I have had many letters 

from the friends of New England soldiers, thanking me with 
overflowing hearts for restoring to them the dearly loved husband, 
son, or brother while yet alive. From D.'s.wife I shall receive 



348 woman's work in the civil war. 

no such message. This is his only chance of life. He cannot 
bear the journey by land. He must go by water or die. He 
will die here — far from friends and home.^' This appeal could 
not be resisted. ^'1 will take him, Miss Ross," was the answer; 
" but it must be only upon the condition that you will promise 
not to ask such a favor of me again whatever the case may be.'' 
^' Never !" was the quick reply, " never will I bind myself by such 
a promise while an Eastern soldier needs a friend or a passage to 
his home! You are the first man to whom I should apply." 
^' Then let him come without a promise. You have conquered ; 
I will do for him all that can be done.'' 

Could such friendship fail to win the hearts of those to whom 
this inestimable woman gave the cheerful service of her life's best 
days ? " Do you want to see Florence Nightingale ?" said one, 
who had not yet left the nursing care which brought him back 
to life and hope, to a companion whom he met. " If you do, 
just come to our hospital and see Miss Ross." 

This was the only reward she craved — a word of thoughtful 
gratitude from those she sought to serve ; and in this was lost all 
remembrance of days of toil and nights of weariness. So from 
week to week and from month to month the self-consecration 
grew more complete — the self-forgetfulness more perfect. But 
the life spent in the service of others was drawing near its end. 
The busy hands were soon to be folded, the heavy eyelids forever 
closed, the weary feet were hastening to their rest. 

The spring of 1863 found Miss Ross still occupied in the 
weary round of her labors at the hospital. She had most 
remarkable strength and vigor of constitution, and that, with 
every other gift and talent she possessed was unsparingly used 
for the promotion of any good cause to which she was devoted. 
During this spring, in addition to all her other and engrossing 
labors, she was very busy in promoting the interests of a large 
fair for the pur])()se of aiding in the establishment of a perma- 
nent Home for discharged soldiers, who were incapacitated for 



ANNA MARIA ROSS. 349 

active labor. She canvassed the city of Philadelphia, and also 
traveled in different parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey in 
order to obtain assistance in this important undertaking. " Is it 
not wrong/^ a friend once asked, " that you should do so much, 
while so many are doing nothing ?^^ '^Oh, there are hundreds 
who would gladly work as I do/' was her reply, '^ but they have 
not my powers of endurance.'^ 

The fair in which she Avas so actively interested took place in 
June, and a large sum was added to the fund previously obtained 
for the benefit of the ^^ Soldiers' Home.'' The work now pro- 
gressed rapidly, and the personal aid and influence of Miss Ross 
were exerted to forward it in every possible way. Yet while 
deeply absorbed in the promotion of this object, which was very 
near to her heart, she found time to brighten, with characteristic 
tenderness and devotion, the last hours of the Rev. Dr. Clay, the 
aged and revered minister of the ancient church, in which the 
marriage of her parents had taken place so many years before. 
With his own family she watched beside his bed, and with them 
received his parting blessing. 

The waning year found the noble undertaking, the object of so 
many prayers and the goal of such ardent desire, near a prosper- 
ous completion. A suitable building had been obtained, and 
many busy days were occupied in the delightful task of furnish- 
ing it. At the close of a day spent in this manner, the friend 
who had been Miss Ross's companion proposed that the remain- 
ing purchases should be deferred to another time, urging, in 
addition to her extreme fatigue, that many of the stores were 
closed. " Come to South Street with me," she replied. " They 
keep open there until twelve o'clock, and we may find exactly 
what Ave want." The long walk was taken, and Avhen the desired 
articles were secured she yielded to her friend's entreaties, and at 
a late hour sought her home. As she pursued her solitary way 
came there no foreshadowing of what was to be? no whisper of 
the hastening summons ? no token of the quick release ? ^'^ea- 



350 

rily were the steps ascended, whicli echoed for the last time the 
familiar tread. Slowly the door closed through which she should 
pass on angelic mission nevermore. Was there no warning ? 

^^ I am tired/^ she said, ^^ and so cold that I feel as if I never 
could be warm again.^^ It was an unusual complaint for her 
to whom fatigue had seemed almost unknown before. But it 
was very natural that exhaustion should follow a day of such 
excessive labor, and she would soon be refreshed. So thought 
those who loved her, unconscious of the threatening danger. 
The heavy chill retained its grasp, the resistless torpor of paraly- 
sis crept slowly on, and then complete insensibility. In this 
utter helplessness, which baffled every effort of human skill, 
night wore away, and morning dawned. There was no change 
and days passed before the veil was lifted. 

She could not believe that her work was all done on earth and 
death near, ^^but," she said, ^^God has willed it — His will be 
done." There was no apparent mental struggle. Well she knew 
that she had done her uttermost, and that God was capable of 
placing in the field other laborers, and perhaps better ones than 
she ; and she uttered no meaningless words when, without a mur- 
mur, she resigned herself to His will. 

A few words of fond farewell, she calmly spoke to the weeping 
friends about her. Then with fainter and fainter breathing, life 
fled so gently that they knew not when the shadowy vale was 
passed. So, silently and peacefully the Death-angel had visited 
her, and upon her features lay the calm loveliness of perfect rest. 

On the 22d of December, 1863, the friends, and sharers of her 
labors were assembled at the dedication of the Soldiers' Home. 
It was the crowning work of her life, and it was completed ; and 
thus, at the same hour, this earthly crown was laid upon her dy- 
ing brow, and tlie freed sou] put on the crown of a glorious im- 
mortality. 

Her funeral was attended by a sorrowing multitude, all of 
whom had kno\vu, and many, yea, most of whoni^ had been blest 



ANNA MARIA ROSS. 351 

by her labors. For even they are blest to whom it has happened 
to know and appreciate a character like hers. 

They made her a tomb, in the beautiful Monument Cemetery, 
beneath the shadow of a stately cedar. Nature itself, in the deso- 
lation of advancing winter, seemed to join in the lament that 
such loveliness and worth was lost to earth. 

But with returning summer, the branches of her overshadow- 
ing cedar are melodious with the song of birds, while roses and 
many flowering plants scatter fragrance to every passing breeze 
as their petals falling hide the dark soil beneath. The hands of 
friends have planted these — an odorous tribute to the memory of 
her they loved and mourn, and have raised beside, in the endur- 
ing marble, a more lasting testimony of her worth. 

The tomb is of pure white marble, surmounted by a tablet of the 
same, which in alto relievo, represents a female figure ministering 
to a soldier, who lies upon a couch. Beneath, is this inscription : 

ERECTED BY HER FRIENDS 

IN MEMOJRY OF 

ANNA M. ROSS, 
Died, December 22, 1863. 

Her piety was fruitful of good works. The friendless child, the 
fugitive slave, and the victim of intemperance were ever objects 
of her tenderest solicitude. 

When civil war disclosed its horrors, she dedicated her life to 
the sick and wounded soldiers of her country, and died a martyr 
to Humanity and Patriotism. 

So closes the brief and imperfect record of a beautiful life ; 
but the light of its lovely example yet remains. 



MRS. G. T. M. DAVIS 




MONG the large number of the ladies of New York 
city who distinguished themselves for their devotion 
to the welfare of the soldiers of our army, of whom so 
many in all forms of suffering were brought there 
during the war, it seems almost invidious to select any individ- 
ual. But it is perhaps less so in the case of the subject of this 
sketch, than of many others, since from the very beginning of 
the war till long after its close, she quietly sacrificed the ease and 
luxury of her life to devote herself untiringly, and almost with- 
out respite, to the duties thus voluntarily assumed and faithfully 
performed. 

Mrs. Davis is the wife of Colonel G. T. M. Davis, who served 
with great distinction in the Mexican war, but who, having 
entered into commercial pursuits, is not at present connected with 
the army. Her maiden name was Pomeroy, and she is a native 
of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Her brother, Robert Pomeroy, 
Esq., of that town, a wealthy manufacturer, was noted for his 
liberal benefactions during the war, and with all his family 
omitted no occasion of showing his devotion to his country and 
to its wounded and suffering defenders. His daughter, near the 
close of the war, became the wife of one of the most distinguished 
young officers in the service, General Bartlett. 

General Bartlett, at twenty-two, and fresh from the classic 
precincts of Harvard, entered the service as a private. He rose 
rapidly through the genius and force of his commanding charac- 

352 



MRS. G. T. M. DAVIS. 353 

ter. He lost a leg, we believe at the siege of Yorktowii, left the 
service, until partially recovered, when he again re-entered it as 
the Colonel of the Forty-ninth Massachusetts Regiment, which 
was raised in Berkshu^e County. For months he rode at the 
head of his regiment with his crutch attached to the back of his 
saddle. It was after his return from the South-west, (where the 
gallant Forty-ninth distinguished itself at Port Hudson, Plaints 
Stone, and other hard- won fields), with a maimed arm, that he 
was rewarded with the hand of one of Berkshire's fairest daugh- 
ters, a member of this patriotic family. Several other young 
men, members of the same family, have also greatly distinguished 
themselves in the service of their country 

At the very outset of the war, or as soon as the sick among 
the volunteers who were pouring into New York, demanded 
relief, Mrs. Davis began to devote time and care to them. Daily 
leaving her elegant home, she sought out and ministered to her 
country's suffering defenders, at the various temporary barracks 
erected for their accommodation. 

When the Park Barracks Ladies' Association was formed, she 
became its Secretary, and so continued for a long period, most 
faithful and energetic in her ministrations. This association 
included in its work the Hospital on Bedloe's Island, and Mrs. 
Davis Avas one of the first who commenced makins: reo:ular visits 
there. 

Most of the men brought to Bedloe's Island in the earlier part 
of the war, were sick Avith the various diseases consequent upon 
the unaccustomed climate and the unwonted exposure they had 
encountered. They needed a very careful and regular diet, one 
Avhich the army rations, though perhaps suitable and sufficient for 
men in health, were unable to supply. It was but natural that 
these ladies, full of the Avarm sympathy Avhich prompted them to 
the unusual tasks they had undertaken, should shrink from seeing 
a half-convalescent fever patient fed Avith hard-bread and salt 
pork, or the greasy soups of which pork AA^as the basis. They 

45 



364 woman's work ik the civil war. 

brouglit delicacies, often prepared by their own hands or in their 
own kitchens, and were undoubtedly injudicious, sometimes, in 
their administration. Out of this arose the newspaper contro- 
versy between the public and the surgeons in charge, at Bedloe's 
Island, which is probably yet fresh in many minds. It was char- 
acterized by a good deal of acrimony. 

Mrs. Davis avers that neither she nor her friends gave food to 
the patients Avithout the consent of the physicians. The affair 
terminated, as is well-known, by the removal of the surgeon in 
charge. 

The Ladies Park Barracks' Association was, as a body, opposed 
to extending its benefactions beyond New York and its immedi- 
ate vicinity. Mrs. Davis was of a different opinion, and was, 
beside, not altogether pleased with the management of the asso- 
ciation. She therefore, after a time, relinquished her official con- 
nection with it, though never for one instant relaxing her efforts 
for the same general object. 

For a long series of months Mrs. Davis repaired almost daily 
to the large General Hospital at David's Island, where thousands 
of sick and wounded men were sometimes congregated. Here 
she and her chief associates, Mrs. Chapman, and Miss Morris, 
established the most amicable relations with the surgeon in charge, 
Dr. McDougall, and were welcomed by him, as valued coadjutors. 

On the opening of the Soldiers' Rest, in Howard Street, an 
association of ladies was formed to aid in administering to the 
comfort of the poor fellows who tarried there during their transit 
through the city, or were received in the well-conducted hospital 
connected with the institution. Of this association Mrs. Davis 
was the Secretary, during the whole term of its existence. 

This association, as well as the institution itself, was admirably 
conducted, and perhaps performed as much real and beneficial 
work as any other in the vicinity of New York. It was con- 
tinued in existence till several months after the close of the war. 

Besides her visits at David's Island and Ho^\■ard Street, which 



MES. G. T. M. DAVIS. 355 

were most assiduoas, Mrs. Davis as often as possible visited the 
Ceutral Park, or i\Iount St. Vincent Hospital, the Ladies' Home 
Hospital, at the corner of Lexington Avenue and Fifty-first 
Street, and the New England Rooms in Broadway. At all of 
these she Avas welcomed, and her efforts most gratefully received. 
Seldom indeed did a day pass, during the long four years of the 
war, and for months after the suspension of hostilities, that her 
kind face was not seen in one or more of the hospitals. 

Her social 'position, as well as her genuine dignity of manners 
enforced the respect of all the officials, and Avon their regard. 
Her untiring devotion and kindness earned her the almost w^or- 
shipping affection of the thousands of sufferers to whom she 
ministered. 

Letters still reach her, at intervals, from the men who OAve, 
perhaps life, certainly relief and comfort to her cherishing care. 
Ignorant men, they may be, little accustomed to the amenities of 
life, capable only of composing the strangely-Avorded, ill-spelled 
letters they send, but the gratitude they express is so abundant 
and so genuine, that one overlooks the uncouthness of manner, 
and the unattractive appearance of the epistles. And seldom 
does she travel but at the most unexpected jjoints scarred and 
maimed veterans present themselves before her, and Avith the 
deepest respect beg the privilege of once more offering their 
thanks. She may have forgotten the faces, that in the great pro- 
cession of suffering flitted briefly before her, but they will never 
forget the face that bent above their couch of pain. 

The native county of Mrs. Davis, Berkshire, Massachusetts, 
Avas famous for the abundance and excellence of the supplies it 
continually sent forward to the sick and suffering soldiers. The 
appeals of Mrs. DaAds to the Avomen of Berkshire, Avere numerous 
and always effective. Her letters Avere exceedingly graphic and 
spirited, and were published frequently in the county papers, 
reaching not only the villages in the teeming valleys but the 
scattered farm-houses among the hills; and they continually gave 



356 

impulse and direction to the noble charities of those women, who, 
in their quiet homes, had already sent forth their dearest and 
best to the service of the country. 

Mrs. Davis for herself disclaims all merit, but has no word of 
praise too much for these. They made the real sacrifices, these 
women who from their small means gave so much, who rose 
before the sun, alike in the cold of winter and the heat of sum- 
mer, who performed the most menial tasks and the hardest toil 
that they might save for the soldiers, that they might gain time 
to work for the soldiers. It was they who gave much, not the 
lady who laid aside only the soft pleasures of a luxurious life, 
whose well-trained servants left no task unfinished during her 
absence, whose bath, and dress, and dinner were always ready on 
her return from the tour of visiting, who gave only what was not 
missed from her abundance, and made no sacrifice but that of her 
personal ease. So speaks Mrs. Davis, in noble self-depreciation 
of herself and her class. There is a variety of gifts. God and 
her country will decide whose work was most worthy. 




■''•^.^:^'> 



^I 1 S S MAF.Y J . S AFF O RD 



MISS MARY J. SAFFORD 




ISS MARY J. SAFFORD, is a native of New Eng- 
land, having been born in Yermont, though her pa- 
rents, very worthy people, early emigrated to the West, 
and settled in Northern Illinois, in which State she has 
since resided, making her home most of the time in Crete, Joliet, 
Shawneetown and Cairo ; the last named place is her present 
home. 

Miss Saiford, early in life, evinced an unusual thirst for know- 
ledge, and gave evidence of an intellect of a superior order; and, 
with an energy and zeal seldom known, she devoted every mo- 
ment to the attainment of an education, the cultivation of her 
mind — and the gaining of such information as the means at hand 
afforded. Her love of the beautiful and good was at once 
marked, and every opportunity made use of to satisfy her desires 
in these directions. 

Her good deeds date from the days of her childhood, and the 
remarkably high sense of duty of which she is possessed, makes 
her continually in search of some object of charity upon which 
to exert her beneficence and kindly care. 

The commencement of the late rebellion, found her a resident 
of Cairo, Illinois, and immediately upon the arrival of the Union 
soldiers there, she set about organizing and establishing tempo- 
rary hospitals throughout the different regiments, in order that 
tlie sick might have immediate and proper care and attention un- 
til better and more permanent arrangements could be effected. 

357 



358 woman's work in the civil war. 

Eveiy day found her a visitor and a laborer among these sick 
soldiers, scores of whom now bear fresh in their memories the 
jpetite form, and gentle and loving face of that good angel of 
mercy to whom they are indebted, through her kind and watch- 
ful care and nursing, for the lives they are now^ enjoying. 

The morning after the battle of Belmont, found her, — the only 
lady — early on the field, fearlessly penetrating far into the ene- 
mies' lines, with her handkerchief tied upon a little stick, and 
waving above her head as a flag of truce, — ministering to the 
wounded, which our army had been compelled to leave behind, 
to some extent — and many a Union soldier owes his life to her al- 
most superhuman eiforts on that occasion. She continued her 
labors with the wounded after their removal to the hospitals, sup- 
plying every want in her power, and giving words of comfort 
and cheer to every heart. 

As soon as the news of the terrible battle of Pittsburg Land- 
ing reached her, she gathered together a supply of lints and 
bandages, and provided herself with such stimulants and other 
supplies as might be required, not forgetting a good share of deli- 
cacies, and hastened to the scene of suffering and carnage, where 
she toiled incessantly day and night in her pilgrimage of love and 
mission of mercy for more than three weeks, and then only re- 
turned with a steamboat-load of the wounded on their way to 
the general hospitals. She continued her labors among the hos- 
pitals at Cairo and the neighborhood, constantly visiting from 
one to the other. Any day she could be seen on her errands of 
mercy passing along the streets with her little basket loaded with 
delicacies, or reading-matter, or accompanied with an attendant 
carrying ample supplies to those who had made known to her 
their desire for some favorite dish or relish. On Christmas day, 
1861, there were some twenty-five regiments stationed at Cairo, 
and on that day she visited all the camps, and presented to every 
sick soldier some little useful present or token. The number of 
sad hearts that she made glad that day no one will ever know 



MISS MARY J. SAFFORD. 359 

save He who knoweth all things. Her zeal and energy in this 
good work was so far in excess of her physical abilities^ that she 
labored beyond her endurance^ and her health finally became so 
much impaired that she was induced to leave the work and make 
a tour in Europe^ where at this writing she still is, though an in- 
valid. Her good deeds even followed her in her travels in a 
foreign land, and no sooner had the German States become in- 
volved in war, than she was called upon and consulted as to the 
establishment of hospital regulations and appointments there — 
and even urged to take charge of and establish and direct the 
whole system. 

Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, of the IN'orthwestern Sanitary Com- 
mission, who has known as much of Miss Safford^s work, as any 
one connected with the service, writes thus of her : 

" Miss Safford commenced her labors immediately, when Cairo 
was occupied. I think she was the very first woman who went 
into the camps and hospitals, in the country; I know she was in 
the West. There was no system, no organization, nothing to do 
with. She systematized everything in Cairo, furnished necessa- 
ries with her own means, or rather with her brother's, who is 
wealthy; went daily to the work, and though surgeons and 
authorities everywhere were opposed to her efforts, she disarmed 
all opposition by her sweetness and grace and beauty. She did 
just tvhat she pleased. At Pittsburg Landing, where she was 
found in advance of other women, she was hailed by dying sol- 
diers, who did not know her name, but had seen her at Cairo, as 
the ^ Cairo Angel.' She came up with boat-load after boat-load 
of sick and wounded soldiers who were taken to hospitals at 
Cairo, Paducah, St. Louis, etc., cooking all the while for them, 
dressing wounds, singing to them, and praying with them. She 
did not undress on the way up from Pittsburg Landing, but 
worked incessantly. 

^' She was very frail, as petite as a girl of twelve summers, and 
utterly unaccustomed to hardships. Sleeping in hospital tents, 



360 

working on pestilential boats, giving up everything to this life, 
carrying the sorrows of the country, and the burdens of the sol- 
dier on her heart like personal griefs, with none of the aids in the 
work that came afterwards, she broke down at the end of the 
first eighteen months, and will never again be well. Her brother 
sent her immediately to Paris, where she underwent the severest 
treatment for the cure of the injury to the spine, occasioned by 
her life in the army and hospitals. The physicians subsequently 
prescribed travel, and she has been since that time in Europe. 
She is highly educated, speaks French and German as well as 
English, and some Italian. She is the most indomitable little 
creature living, heroic, uncomplaining, self-forgetful, and will yet 
' die in harness.' When the w^ar broke out in Italy, she was in 
Florence, and at Madame Mario's invitation, immediately went 
to work to assist the Italian ladies in preparing for the sick and 
wounded of their soldiers. In Norway, she was devising ways 
and means to assist poor girls to emigrate to America, where they 
had relatives — and so everywhere. She must be counted among 
those who have given up health, and ultimately life for the 
country." 

We add also the following extracts from a letter from Cairo, 
published in one of the Chicago papers, early in the war. 

AN ANGEL AT CAIRO. 
"I cannot close this letter from Cairo without a passing word of one whose 
name is mentioned by thousands of our soldiers with gratitude and blessing. 
Miss Mary Safford is a resident of this town, whose life since the beginning of 
tlie war, has been devoted to the amelioration of the soldier's lot, and his com- 
fort in the hospitals. She is a young lady, petite in figure, unpretending, but 
highly cultivated, by no means officious, and so wholly unconscious of her ex- 
cellencies, and the great work she is achieving, that I fear this public allusion 
to her may pain her modest nature. Her sweet, young face, full of benevo- 
lence, pleasant voice, and winning manner instate her in every one's heart 
directly; and the more one sees her, the more he admires her great soul and 
her noble nature. Not a day elapses but she is found in the hospitals, unless 
indeed she is absent on an errand of mercy up the Tennessee, or to the hospitals 
In Kentucky. 



MISS MARY J. S AFFORD. 361 

"Every sick and wounded soldier in Cairo knows and loves her; and as slie 
enters the ward, every pale face brightens at her approach. As she passes 
along, she inquires of each one how he has passed the night, if he is well sup- 
plied with reading matter, and if there is anything she can do for him. All 
tell her their story frankly — the man old enough to be her father, and the boy 
of fifteen, who should be out of the army, and home with his mother. One 
thinks he would like a baked apple if the doctor will allow it — another a rice 
pudding, such as she can make — a third a tumbler of buttermilk — a fourth 
wishes nothing, is discouraged, thinks he shall die, and breaks down utterly. 
in tears, and him she soothes and encourages, till he resolves for her sake, to 
keep up a good heart, and hold on to life a little longer — a fifth wants her to 
write to his wife — a sixth is afraid to die, and with him, and for him, her de- 
vout spirit wrestles, till light shines through the dark valley — a seventh desires 
her to sit by him and read, and so on. Every request is attended to, be it ever 
so trivial, and when she goes again, if the doctor has sanctioned the gratifica- 
tion of the sick man's wish, the buttermilk, baked apple, rice pudding, etc., are 
carried along. Doctors, nurses, medical directors, and army officers, are all 
her true friends; and so judicious and trustworthy is she, that the Chicago 
Sanitary Commission have given her carte blanche to draw on their stores at 
Cairo for anything she may need in her errands of mercy. She is performing 
a noble work, and that too in the quietest and most unconscious manner. Said 
a sick soldier from the back woods, in the splendid hospital at Mound City, 
who was transferred thither from one of the miserable regimental hospitals at 
Cairo, 'I'm taken care of here a heap better than I was at Cairo ; but I'd rather 
be there than here, for the sake of seeing that little gal that used to come in 
every day to see us. I tell you what, she's an angel, if there is any.' To this 
latter assertion we say amen ! most heartily." 

Miss Saiford is the sister of A. B. Safford, Esq., a well-known 
and highly respected banker at Cairo, Illinois, and of Hon. A. 
P. K. Saiford of Nevada. 

46 



MRS. LYDIA G. PARRISH 




T tlie outbreak of hostilities Mrs. Parrisli was resid- 
fj ing at Media^ Pennsylvania^ near Philadelphia. Her 
husband, Dr. Joseph Parrish, had charge of an insti- 
tution established there for idiots, or those of feeble 
mental capacity, and it cannot be doubted that Mrs. Parrish, with 
her kindly and benevolent instincts, and desire for usefidness, 
found there an ample sphere for her efforts, and a welcome occu- 
pation. 

But as in the case of thousands of others, all over the country, 
Mrs. Parrish found the current of her life and its occupations 
marvellously changed, by the war. There was a new call for the 
efforts of woman, such an one as in our country, or in the world, 
had never been made. English women had set the example of 
sacrifice and work for their countrymen in arms, but their efforts 
were on a limited scale, and bore but a very small proportion to 
the great uprising of loyal women in our country, and their 
varied, grand persistent labors during the late civil war in America. 
Not a class, or grade, or rank, of our countrywomen, but ^Y•ds 
represented in this work. The humble dweller in the fishing 
cabins on the bleak and desolate coast, the woman of the prairie, 
and of the cities, the wife and daughter of the mechanic, and the 
farmer, of the merchant, and the professional man, the lady from 
the mansion of wealth, proud perhaps of her old name, of her 
culture and refinement — all met and labored together, bound by 
one common bond of patriotism and of sympathy. 

362 



MES. LYDIA G. PAERISH. 363 

Mrs. Parrish was one of the first to lay her talents and her 
efforts upon the altar of her country. In 1861, and almost as 
soon as the need of woman's self-sacrificing labors became appa- 
rent, she volunteered her services in behalf of the sick and 
wounded soldiers of the Union. 

She visited Washington while the army was yet at the capital 
and in its vicinity. Her husband, Dr. Parrish, had become con-- 
nected with the newly organized Sanitary Commission, and in 
company with him and other gentlemen similarly connected, she 
examined the different forts, barracks, camps, and hospitals then 
occupied by our troops, for the purpose of ascertaining their con- 
dition, and selecting a suitable sphere for the work in which she 
intended to engage. 

On the first day of 1862, she commenced her hospital labors, 
selecting for that purpose the Georgetown Seminary Hospital. 
She wrote letters for the patients, read to them, and gave to them 
all the aid and comfort in her power ; and she was thus enabled 
to learn their real Avants, and to seek the means of supplying 
them. Their needs were many, and awakened all her sympathies 
and incited her to ever-renewed effort. After one day's trial of 
these new scenes, she wrote thus in her journal, January 2, 1862: 
" My heart is so oppressed with the sight of suffering I see around 
me that I am almost unfitted for usefulness; such sights are new 
to me. I feel the need of some resource, where I may apply for 
delicacies and comforts, which are positively necessary. The 
Sanitary Commission is rapidly becoming the sinew of strength 
for the sick and wounded, and I Avill go to their store-rooms." 
Application was made to the Commission, and readily and promptly 
responded to. She was authorized to draw from their stores, and 
was promised aid and protection from the organization. 

Both camps and hospitals were rapidly filling up ; the weather 
was inclement and the roads bad, but at the solicitation of other 
earnest workers, she made occasional visits to camps in the coun- 
try, and distributed clothing, books and comforts of various 



364 woman's work in the civil war. 

kinds. The "Berdan Sharp-shooters" were encamped a few miles 
from the city, and needed immediate assistance. She was re- 
quested by the Secretary of the Commission to ^Wisit the camps, 
make observations, inquire into their needs, and report to the 
Commission." She reached the camp through ahnost impas- 
sable roads, and was received by the officers with respect and 
consideration, upon announcing the object of her visit. She 
made calls upon the men in hospitals and quarters, returned to 
Washington, reported ^Hwo hundred sick, tents and streets need- 
ing police, small pox breaking out, men discouraged, and officers 
unable to procure the necessary aid, that she had distributed a 
few jellies to the sick, checker boards to a few of the tents, and 
made a requisition for supplies to meet the pressing want." 
This little effi^rt was the means of affording speedy relief to 
many suffering men. She did not however feel at liberty to 
abandon her hospital service, as we learn from a note in her 
diary, that "this outside work does not seem to be my mission. 
I have become thoroughly interested in my daily rounds at the 
city hospitals, particularly at Georgetown Seminary, where my 
heart and energies are fully enlisted." She passed several weeks 
in this service, going from bed to bed with her little stores, which 
she dispensed under instructions from the surgeon, without being 
known by name to the many recipients of her attention and care. 

The stores of the Commission were not then as ample as they 
afterward became, when its noble aims had become more fully 
understood, and its grand mission of benevolence more widely 
known, an^d the sick and wounded were in need of many things 
not obtainable from either this source or the Government sup- 
plies. Mrs. Parrish determined, therefore, to return to her 
northern home and endeavor to interest the people of her neigh- 
borhood in the cause she had so much at heart. She found the 
people ready to respond liberally to her appeals, and soon returned 
to Washington well satisfied with the success of her efforts. 

She felt now that her time, and if need be her life, must be 



MRS. LYDIA G. PARRISH. 365 

consecrated to this work, and as her diary expresses it, she "could 
not remain at home," and that if she could be of service in her 
new sphere of labor she "must return." 

After her brief absence, she re-entered the Georgetown Semi- 
nary Hospital. Death had removed some of her former patients, 
others had returned to duty, but others whom she left there 
welcomed her with enthusiasm as the "orange lady,'^ a title she 
had unconsciously earned from the fact that she had been in the 
habit of distributing oranges freely to such of the patients^ 
were allowed to have them. 

The experience of life often shows us the importance of little 
acts which so frequently have an entirely disproportionate result. 
Mrs. Parrish found this true in her hospital ministrations. Little 
gifts and attentions often opened the way to the closed hearts of 
those to whom she ministered, and enabled her to reach the 
innermost concealed thought-life of her patients. 

A soldier sat in his chair, wrapped in his blanket, forlorn, hag- 
gard from disease, sullen, selfish in expression, and shrinking 
from her notice as she passed him. To her morning salutation, 
he would return only a cold recognition. He seemed to be brist- 
ling with defenses against encroachment. And thus it remained 
till one day a small gift penetrated to the very citadel of his 
fortress. 

" Shall I read to you ?'^ she commenced, kindly, to which he 
replied, surlily, " Don^t want reading.'' " Shall I write to any 
of your friends?" she continued. "I hav'n't any friends," he 
said in the sourest tone. Repulsed, but not baffled, she presently, 
and in the same kind manner, took an orange from her basket, 
and gently asked him if he would accept it. There was a per- 
ceptible brightening of his face, but he only answered, in the 
same surly tone, as he held forth his hand, " Don't care if I do." 

And yet, in a little time, his sullen spirit yielded — he spread 
all his troubles before the friend he had so long repulsed, and 
opening his heart, showed that what had seemed so selfish and 



366 

moody in him^ arose from a deep sense of loneliness and discour- 
agement, which disappeared the moment the orange had unlocked 
his heart, and admitted her to his confidence and affection. 

About six weeks she spent thus in alternate visits to the vari- 
ous hospitals in the vicinity of Washington, though her labors 
were principally confined to the Georgetown Hospital, where they 
commenced, and where her last visit was made. 

As her home duties called her at that time, she returned 
^ther, briefly. Soon after she reached home, she received a let- 
ter from one of her former patients to whom she had given her 
address, requesting her to call at the Broad and Cherry Street 
Hospital, in Philadelphia. She did so, and on entering the build- 
ing found herself surrounded by familiar faces. Her old Wash- 
ington friends had just arrived, and welcomed her with cordial 
greetings. The stronger ones approached her with outstretched 
hands — some, too feeble to rise, covered their faces and wept with 
joy — she was the only person known to them in all the great 
lonely city. The surgeon-in-charge, observing this scene, urged 
her to visit the hospital often, where her presence was sure to do 
the men great good. 

During her stay at home she assisted in organizing a Ladies' 
Aid Society at Chester. She was appointed Dkectress for the 
township where she resided, and as the hospital was about to be 
located near Chester, she, with others, directed her attention to 
preparing and furnishing it. Sewing-circles were formed, and as 
a result of the efforts made, by the time the soldiers arrived, a 
plentiful supply of nice clothing, delicacies, etc., etc., was ready 
for them. 

Mrs. Parrish united with other women of the vicinity in orga- 
nizing a corps of volunteer nurses, who continued to perform their 
duties with regularity and faithfulness until some time after, a 
new order dispensed with their services. 

Her labors during. the summer and autumn of 1862 visibly 



MKS. LYDIA G. PARRiSH. 367 

affected her health, and were the cause of a severe ilhiess which 
continued for several weeks^. 

Her health being at length restored, she went to Washington, 
spent a few days in visiting the hospitals there, and then, with a 
pass sent her by Major-General Sumner, from Falmouth, she 
joined Mrs. Dr. Harris and started, January 17th, 1863, for 
Falmouth via Acquia Creek. 

The army was in motion and much confusion existed, but they 
found comfortable quarters at the Lacy House, where they were 
under the protection of the General and his staff. 

Here Mrs. Parrish found much to do, there being a great deal 
of sickness among the troops. The weather was stormy, and the 
movement of the army was impeded; and though she underwent 
much privation for want of suitable food, and on account of the 
inclement season she continued faithful at her post and accom- 
plished much good. 

In December of the same year she accompanied her husband, 
with the Medical Director of the Department of Virginia and 
North Carolina, on a tour of inspection to the hospitals of York- 
town, Fortress Monroe, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Newbern, 
North Carolina. While at Old Point she learned that there was 
about to be an exchange of prisoners, and desiring to render some 
services in this direction obtained permission from General 
Butler to proceed, in company with a friend, Miss L. C. on the 
flag-of-truce boat to City Point, witness the exchange, and render 
such aid as was possible to our men on their return passage. 

There were five hundred Confederate prisoners on board, who, 
as her journal records, ^^sang our National airs, and seemed to be 
a jolly and happy healthy company." 

Our men were in a very different condition — '^sick and weary," 
and needing the Sanitary Commission supplies, which had been 
brought for them, yet shouting with feeble voices their gladness at 
being once more under the old flag, and in freedom. Mrs. Par- 



368 woman's woek in the civil avar. 

rish fed and comforted these poor men as best she could, till the 
steamer anchored off Old Point a^ain. 

It had been intended to continue the exchange much further, 
but a dispute arising concerning the treatment of negro prisoners, 
the operations of the cartel were arrested, and the exchange sus- 
pended. She found, therefore, no further need of her services in 
this direction, and so returned home. 

For many months to come, as one of the managers of the 
women's branch of the United States Sanitary Commission, she 
found ample employment in preparation for the great Philadel- 
phia Fair, in which arduous service she continued until its close, 
in July, 1864. The exhausting labors of these months, and the 
heat of the weather during the continuance of the Fair, made it 
necessary for her to have a respite for the remainder of the 
summer. 

It was in the early winter of this year that she accompanied 
her husband on a tour of inspection to the hosj)itals of Annapo- 
lis, and became so interested in the condition of the returned 
prisoners, who needed so much done for them in the way of per- 
sonal care, that she gladly consented, at the solicitation of the 
medical officers and agent of the Commission, to serve there for 
a season. 

Of the usefulness of her work among the prisoners, testimony 
is abundant. What she saw, and what she did, is most touch- 
ingly set forth in the following letters from her pen, extracted 
from the Bulletin of the United States Sanitary Commission : 

AxNAPOLis, December 1, 1864. 
** The steamer Constitution arrived this morning with seven hundred and !?ix 
men, one hundred and twenty -five of whom were sent immediately to hospitals, 
being too ill to enjoy more than the sight of their 'promised land.' Many 
indeed, were in a dying condition. Some had died a short time before the 
arrival of the boat. Those Avho Avere able, proceeded to the higli ground above 
the landing, and after being divided into battalions, each was conducted in turn 
to the Government store-house, under charge of Captain Davis, who furnished 
each man with a new suit of clothes recorded his name, regiment and company. 



MRS. LYDIA G. PAERISH. 369 

Tliey then passed out to another building near by, where warm water, soap, 
towels, brushes and combs awaited them. 

" After their ablutions they returned to the open space in front of the build- 
ing, to look around and enjoy the realities of their new life. Here they were 
furnished with paper, envelopes, sharpened pencils, hymn-books and tracts from 
the Sanitary Commission, and sat down to communicate the glad news of their 
freedom to friends at home. In about two hours most of the men who were 
able, had sealed their letters and deposited them in a large mail bag which was 
furnished, and they were soon sent on their way to hundreds of anxious kindred 
and friends. 

" Captain Davis very kindly invited me to accompany him to another build- 
ing, to witness the administration of the food. Several cauldrons containing 
nice coffee, piles of new white bread, and stands covered with meat, met the 
eye. Three dealers were in attendance. The first gave to each soldier a loaf 
of bread, the second a slice of boiled meat, the third, dipping the new tin-cup 
from the hand of each, into the coffee cauldron, dealt out hot coffee ; and how 
it was all received I am unable to describe. The feeble ones reached out their 
emaciated hands to receive gladly, that which they were scarcely able to carry, 
and with brightening faces and grateful expressions went on their way. The 
stouter ones of the party, however, must have their jokes, and such expressions 
as the following passed freely among them: 'No stockade about this bread,' 
'This is no confederate dodge,' etc. One fellow, whose skin was nearly black 
from exposure, said, ' That's more bread than I've seen for two months.' An- 
other, ' That settles a man's plate.' A bright-eyed boy of eighteen, whose young 
spirit had not been completely crushed out in rebeldom, could not refrain from 
a hurrah, and cried out, ' Hurrah for Uncle Sam, hurrah ! No Confederacy 
about this bread.' One poor feeble fellow, almost too faint to hold his loaded 
plate, muttered out, 'Why, this looks as if we were going to live, there's no 
grains of corn for a man to swallow whole in this loaf.' Thus the words of 
cheer and hope came from almost every tongue, as they received their rations 
and walked away, each with his 'thank you, thank you;' and sat down upon the 
ground, which forcibly reminded me of the Scripture account where the multi- 
tude sat down in companies, 'and did eat and were filled.' 

" Ambulances came afterwards to take those who were unable to walk to 
Camp Parole, which is two miles distant. One poor man, who was making his 
way behind all the rest to reach the ambulance, thought it would leave him, 
and with a most anxious and pitiful expression, cried out, ' Oh, wait for me !' 
I think I shall never forget his look of distress. When he reached the wagon 
he was too feeble to step in, but Captain Davis, and Eev. J. A. Whitaker, Sani- 
tary Commission agent, assisted him till he was placed by the side of his com- 
panions, who were not in much better condition than himself. When he was 
47 



370 



seated, lie was so thankful, that he wept like a child, and those who stood by tc 
aid him could do no less. Soldiers — brave soldiers, officers and all, were 
moved to tears. That must be a sad discipline which not only wastes the manly- 
form till the sign of humanity is nearly obliterated, but breaks the manly spirit 
till it is as tender as a child's." 

" Becemher 6, 1864. 

"The St. John's College Hospital, is under the management of Dr. Palmer, 
surgeon-in-charge, and his executive officer. Dr. Tremaine. These gentlemen 
are worthy of praise for the systematic arrangement of its cleanly apartments, 
and for the very kind attention they bestow on their seven hundred patients. I 
visited the hospital a day or two ago, and, from what I saw there, can assure 
the relatives at home, that tlie sufferers are well provided for. If they could 
only be seen, how comfortable they look in their neat white-spread beds, much 
pain would be spared them. One of the surgeons informed me that all the ap- 
pliances are bestowed either by the Government or the Sanitary Commission. 

" As I passed through the different wards, I noticed that each one was well 
supplied with rocking-chairs, and alluding to the great comfort they must be to 
the invalids, the surgeon replied : 'Yes, this is one of the rich gifts made to us 
by the Sanitary Commission.' An invalid took up the words and remarked : 
' I think it's likely that all about me is from the Sanitary, for I see my flannel 
shirt, this wrapper, and pretty much all I've got on, has the stamp of the 
United States Sanitary Commission on it.' 

" The diet kitchen is under the care of Miss E.ich, who, with her assistants, 
was busy preparing delicacies of various kinds, for two hundred patients who 
were not able to go to the convalescent's table. The whole atmosphere was 
filled with the odor of savory viands. On the stove I counted mutton-chops, 
beef-steaks, oysters, chicken, milk, tea, and other very palatable articles cook- 
ing. A man stood by a table, buttering nicely toasted bread; before him were 
eight to ten rows of the staff of life, rising up like pillars of strength to support 
the inner man. The chief cook in this department, informed me that he but- 
tered twelve hundred slices of bread, or toast daily, for the diet patients, and 
prepared eighty-six different dishes at each meal. While in conversation with 
this good-natured person, the butcher brought in a supply of meat, amounting, 
he informed me, to one hundred pounds per day for the so-called diet kitchen, 
though this did not sound much like it. Before we left this attractively clean 
place the oysterman was met emptying his cans. Upon inquiring how many 
oysters he had, he replied, ' Six gallons is my every day deposit here ;' and oh ! 
they were so inexpressibly fine-looking, I could not resist robbing some poor 
fellow of one large bivalve to ascertain their quality. Next we were shown the 
store-room, where there was a good supply of Sanitary stores, pads, pillows, 
shirts, drawers, arm-slings, stock of crutches, fans, and other comforts, which, 



MES. LYDIA G. PARRISH. 371 

the doctor said, had been deposited by the United States Sanitary Commission 
Agent. These were useful articles that were not furnished by the Govern- 
ment. 

" The executive officer having given us permission to find our way among 
the patients, we passed several hours most profitably and interestingly, con- 
versing with those who had none to cheer them for many months, and writing 
letters for those who were too feeble to use the pen. When the day closed our 
labors we felt like the disciple of old, who said, ' Master, it is good to be here,' 
and wished that we might set up our tabernacle and glorify the Lord by doing 
good to the sick, the lame, and those who had been in prison." 

"Decejnber 8, 1864. 

" No human tongue or pen can ever describe the horrible suffering we have 
witnessed this day. 

"I was early at the landing, eight and a-half o'clock in the morning, before 
the boat threw out her ropes for security. The first one brought two hundred 
bad cases, which the Naval surgeon told me should properly go to the hospital 
near by, were it not that others were coming, every one of whom was in the 
most wretched condition imaginable. They were, therefore, sent in ambulances 
to Camp Parole hospital, distant two miles, after being washed and fed at the 
barracks. 

"In a short time another boat-load drew near, and oh ! such a scene of suffer- 
ing humanity I desire never to behold again. The whole deck was a bed of 
straw for our exhausted, starved, emaciated, dying fellow-creatures. Of the 
five hundred and fifty that left Savannah, the surgeon informed me not 
over two hundred would survive ; fifty had died on the passage ; three died 
while the boat was coming to the land. I saw five men dying as they were 
carried on stretchers from the boat to the Naval Hospital. The stretcher- 
bearers were ordered by Surgeon D. Vanderkieft to pause a moment that the 
names of the dying men might be obtained. To the credit of the officers and 
their assistants it should be known that everything was done in the most sys- 
tematic and careful manner. Each stretcher had four attendants, who stood in 
line and came up promptly, one after the other, to receive the sufferers as they 
were carried off the boat. There was no confusion, no noise ; all acted with 
perfect military order. Ah ! it was a solemn funeral service to many a brave 
soldier, that was thus being performed by kind hearts and hands. 

" Some had become insane ; their wild gaze, and clenched teeth convinced 
the observer that reason had fled ; others were idiotic ; a few lying in spasms ; 
perhaps the realization of the hope long cherished, yet oft deferred, or the 
welcome sound of the music, sent forth by the military band, was more than 
their exhausted nature could bear. When blankets were thrown over them, no 
one would have supposed that a human form lay beneath, save for the small 



372 

prominences which the bony head and feet indicated. Oh ! God of justice, what 
retribution awaits the perpetrators of such slow and awful murder, 

" The hair of some was matted together, like beasts of the stall which lie 
down in their own filth. Vermin are over them in abundance. Nearly every 
man was darkened by scurvy, or black with rough scales, and with scorbutic 
sores. One in particular was reduced to the merest skeleton ; his face, neck, 
and feet covered with thick, green mould. A number who had Government 
clothes given them on the boat were too feeble to put them on, and were car- 
ried ashore partially dressed, hugging their clothing w^ith a death-grasp that 
they could not be persuaded to yield. It was not unfrequent to hear a man 
feebly call, as he was laid on a stretcher, " Don't take my clothes ;" " Oh, save 
my new shoes ;" " Don't let my socks go back to Andersonville," In their wild 
death-struggle, with bony arms and hands extended, they would hold up their 
new socks, that could not be put on because of their swollen limbs, saying 
' Save 'em till I get home.' In a little while, however, the souls of many were 
released from their worn-out frames, and borne to that higher home where all 
things are registered for a great day of account. 

" Let our friends at home have open purses and willing hands to keep up the 
supplies for the great demand that must necessarily be made upon them. Much 
more must yet be done. 

" Thousands now languish in Southern prisons, that may yet be brought thus 
far toward home. Let every Aid Society be more diligent, that the stores of 
the Sanitary Conimission may not fail in this great work." 

Her services at Annapolis were cut shorty and prematurely 
discontinued; for returning to her home for a short stay, to make 
preparations for a longer sojourn at Annapolis, she was again 
attacked by illness, which rendered it impossible for her to go 
thither again. 

On her recovery, knowing that an immense amount of igno- 
rance existed among officers and men concerning the operations of 
the Sanitary Commission, she compiled a somewhat elaborate, yet 
carefully condensed statement of its plans and workings, together 
with a great amount of useful information in relation to the facil- 
ities embraced in its system of special relief, giving a list of all 
Homes and Lodges, and telling how to secure back pay for sol- 
diers, on furlough or discharged, bounties, pensions, etc., etc. 
Bound up with this, is a choice collection of hymns, adapted to 



MRS. LYDIA G. PARRISH. 373 

the soldier's use, the whole forming a neat little volume of con* 
venient size for the pocket. 

The manuscript was submitted to the committee, accepted, and 
one hundred thousand copies ordered to be printed for gratuitous 
distribution in all the hospitals and camps. The '^ Soldiers' 
Friend,'' as it was called, was soon distributed in the different 
departments and posts of the army, and was even found in the 
Southern hospitals and prisons, while it was the pocket compan- 
ion of men in the trenches, as well as of those in quarters and 
hospital. Many thousands were instructed by this little direc- 
tory, where to find the lodges, homes and pension offices of the 
Commission, and were guarded against imposture and loss. So 
urgent was the demand for it, and so useful was it, that the com- 
mittee ordered a second edition. 

Perhaps no work published by the Sanitary Commission has 
been of more real and practical use than this little volume, or has 
had so large a circulation. It was the last public work performed 
for the Commission by Mrs. Parrish. At the close of the war 
her labors did not end; but transferring her efforts to the ame- 
lioration of the condition of the freedmen, she still found herself 
actively engaged in a work growing directly out of the war. 



MRS. ANNIE WITTENMEYER 




RS. ANNIE WITTENMEYER, who, during the 
early part of the war was widely known as the State 
Sanitary Agent of Iowa, and afterward as the originator 
of the Diet Kitchens, which being attached to hospitals 
proved of the greatest benefit as an adjunct of the medical treat- 
ment, was at the outbreak of the rebellion, residing in quiet 
seclusion at Keokuk. With the menace of armed treason to the 
safety of her country^s institutions, she felt all her patriotic in- 
stincts and sentiments arousing to activity. She laid aside her 
favorite intellectual pursuits, and prepared herself to do what a 
woman might in the emergency which called into existence a 
great army, and taxed the Government far beyond its immediate 
ability in the matter of Hospital Supplies and the proper provi- 
sion for, and care of the sick and wounded. 

Early in 1861 rumors of the sufferings of the volunteer sol- 
diery, called so suddenly to the field, and from healthy northern 
climates to encounter the unwholesome and miasmatic exhalations 
of more southern regions, as well as the pain of badly-dressed 
wounds, began to thrill and grieve the hearts which had 
willingly though sadly sent them forth in their country's defense. 
Mrs. Wittenmeyer saw at once that a field of usefulness opened 
before her. Her first movement w^as to write letters to every 
town in her State urging patriotic women in every locality to 
organize themselves into Aid Societies, and commence systemati- 
cally the work of supplying the imperative needs of the suffering 



374 



MRS. ANNIE WITTENMEYER. 375 

soldiers. These appeals^ and the intense sympathy and patriotism 
that inspired the hearts of the women of the North, proved quite 
sufficient. In Iowa the earlier Reports were addressed to her, 
and societies throughout the State forwarded their goods to the 
Keokuk Aid Society with which she was connected. As the 
agent of this society Mrs. Wittenmeyer went to the field and 
distributed these supplies. 

Thus her work had its inception — and being still the chosen 
agent of distribution, she gave herself no rest. In fact, from the 
summer of 1861 until the close of the war, she was continually 
and actively employed in some department of labor for the. 
soldiers, and did not allow herself so much as one week for rest. 

From June, 1861, to April 1st, 1862, she had received and dis- 
tributed goods to the value of $6,000. From that to July 1st, 
$12,564, and from that until September 25th, 1862, $2,000, mak- 
ing a total of $20,564 received before her appointment of that 
date by the Legislature as State Agent. From that time until 
her resignation of the office, January 13th, 1864, she received 
$115,876,93. Thus, in about two years and a half, she received 
and distributed more than $136,000 worth of goods and sanitary 
stores contributed for the benefit of suffering soldiers. 

But while laboring so constantly in the army, Mrs. Witten- 
meyer did not overlook the needs of the destitute at home. In 
October, 1863, a number of benevolent individuals, of whom she 
was one, called a Convention of Aid Societies, which had for its 
foremost object to take some steps toward providing for the wants 
of the orphans of soldiers. That Convention led to the estab- 
lishment of the Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home, an Institution 
of which the State is now justly proud, and which is bestowing 
upon hundreds of children bountiful care and protection. 

While laboring in the hospitals at Chattanooga in the winter 
of 1863-4, Mrs. Wittenmeyer matured her long-cherished plan 
for supplying food for the lowest class of hospital patients, and 
this led to the establishment of Diet Kitchens. Believing her 



376 

idea could be better carried out by the Christian Commission, 
than under any other auspices, she soon after resigned her position 
as State agent, and became connected with that organization. 

From a little work entitled ^^ Christ in the Army,^^ composed 
of sketches by different individuals, and published by the Chris- 
tian Commission, and from the Fourth Report of the Maryland 
Branch of the Christian Commission, we make the following 
extracts, relative to Mrs. Wittenmeyer's labors in this sphere of 
effort : 

" The sick and wounded suffer greatly from the imperfect cooking 
of the soldier nurses. To remedy this evil, a number of ladies have 
offered themselves as delegates of the Christian Commission, and 
arrangements have been made with the medical authorities to estab- 
lish Diet Kitchens, where suitable food may be prepared by ladies' 
hands for our sick soldiers, — the Government furnishing the staple 
articles, and the Christian Commission providing the ladies and 
the delicacies- and cordials. One of these at Knoxville is thus 
described by a correspondent of The Lutheran : — 

^^ There have been several large hospitals in this city, but 
recently they have been all consolidated into one. In connection 
with this hospital is a ^Special Diet Kitchen.' Many of our 
readers will doubtless wonder what these ^Special Diet Kitchens' 
are. They have been originated by Mrs. Annie Wittenmeyer, of 
Keokuk, formerly State Sanitary Agent of Iowa. In her arduous 
labors in the Army of the Cumberland, she met with a large 
number of patients who suffered for want of suitably prepared, 
delicate and nutritious food. ISTone of the benevolent institutions 
in connection with the army have been able to reach this class of 
persons. She says, in her report to the General Assembly of the 
State: ^This matter has given me serious and anxious thought 
for the past year, but I have recently submitted to the Christian 
Commission a plan by which I believe this class of patients may 
be reached and relieved. The plan proposed, is the establish- 
ment of "Special Diet Kitchens," in connection with that Com- 



MES. ANNIE WITTENMEYER. 377 

mission, to be superintended by earnest, prudent Christian women, 
who will secure the distribution of proper food to this class of 
patients — taking such delicate articles of food as our good people 
supply to the very bed-sides of the poor languishing soldiers, and 
administering, with words of encouragement and sympathy, to 
their pressing wants ; such persons to co-operate with the surgeons 
in all their efforts for the sick/ This plan of operations has been 
sanctioned and adopted by the United States Christian Commis- 
sion. There is one in successful operation at JSTashville, under 
the direction, I believe, of a daughter of the Honorable J. K. 
Moorehead, of Pittsburg. The one here is under the direction of 
Mrs. R. E. Conrad, of Keokuk, Iowa, and her two sisters. They 
are doing a great and good work now in Knoxville. From three 
to five hundred patients are thus daily supplied with delicate food, 
who would otherwise have scarcely anything to eat. The success 
of their labors has demonstrated beyond a doubt the practicabil- 
ity of the plan of Mrs. Wittenmeyer. The good resulting from 
their arduous labor proves that much can be done by these special 
efforts to rescue those who are laid upon languishing beds of sick- 
ness and pain, and have passed almost beyond the reach of ordi- 
nary means. The great need we have in connection with these 
^Diet Kitchens,^ is the want of canned fruits, jellies, preserves, 
etc. If our good people, who have already done so much, will 
provide these necessary means, they will be distributed to the 
most needy, and in such a way as to accomplish the most good." 
The War Department is so well satisfied with the value of these 
Diet Kitchens, in saving the lives of thousands of invalids, that 
it has issued the following special Order: — 

SPECIAL ORDERS, No. 362. 

War Department, Adjutant-General's Office, 
Washington, D. C, October 24, 1864. 
[extract.] 
* * * -x- 5g_ Permission to visit the United States General Plospitals, 
within the lines of the several Military Departments of the United States, for 
48 



378 



the purpose of superintending the preparation of food in the Special Diet 
Kitchens of the same, is hereby granted Mrs. Annie Wittenmeyer, Special 
Agent United States Christian Commission, and such ladies as she may deem 
proper to employ, by request of the United States surgeons. The Quarter- 
master's Department will furnish the necessary transportation. 

By okdee of the Secretary of War : 

e. d. townsend, 

Assistant Adjutant- General. 
Official : 

DIET KITCHENS. 

Mrs. Annie Wittenmeyer suggested and introduced the use 
of the Diet Kitchen into the hospitals. The Kitchen was used 
extensively among the Branch Offices of the West. The design 
of the Kitchen was, to have prepared for the men who were 
under treatment, such articles of food and delicacies as are grate- 
ful to the sick, and at the same time may be allowed with safety. 
The ladies who were engaged in this department performed their 
labors under the direction of the surgeons, who appointed their 
stations and approved their preparations. The process was very 
much like that of the house in which the surgeon directs, and 
the family provides, the nourishing food that is needed for the 
patient. 

Mrs. Wittenmeyer had the Diet Kitchens under her supervis- 
ion. She was the agent of the Commission for the purpose. 
She operated under regulations which were approved by the 
Commission and by the War Department. These regulations 
were printed and circulated among the managers of the Kitchens. 
So efPective were the orders under which the department was 
conducted, that not the least difficulty or misunderstanding oc- 
curred, notwithstanding the responsible relations of the co-ope- 
rators, part being officials of the army and part under the direction 
of a voluntary service. Each of the managers was furnished with 
a copy of the rules, which, with the endorsement of the branch 
office with which the service was connected, constituted the com- 
mission of the manager. 



MRS. ANNIE WITTENMEYER. 379 

The Special Diet Kitchens, were first adopted in the Depart- 
ment of the Cumberland, and in that of the Mississippi, and 
with results so unexpectedly beneficial, that Mrs. Wittenmeyer 
was earnestly solicited to extend the work to the Army of the 
Potomac. This she did in the winter of 1864, and it continued 
until the close of the war with great success. 

Much of this success was undoubtedly owing to the class of 
ladies engaged in the work. Many of them were from the high- 
est circles of society, educated, refined and accomplished, and 
each was required to maintain the life and character of an earnest 
Christian, They thus commanded the respect of officers and 
men, and proved a powerful instrument of good. As we have 
seen, the Christian Commission has borne ample testimony to the 
value of the efforts of Mrs. Wittenmeyer, and her associates in 
this department of hospital service. 

Mrs. Wittenmeyer continued actively engaged in the service 
of the Christian Commission, in the organizing of Diet Kitchens, 
and similar labors, until the close of the war, and the disbanding 
of that organization, when she returned to her home in Keokuk, 
to resume the quiet life she had abandoned, and to gain needed 
repose, after her four years' effort in behalf of our . suffering de- 
fenders. 



MISS MELCENIA ELLIOTT 




MONG the heroic and devoted women who have labored 
^ for the soldiers of the Union in the late war, and en- 
dured all the dangers and privations of hospital life, 
is Miss Melcenia Elliott, of Iowa. Born in Indiana, 
and reared in the Northern part of Iowa, she grew to woDian- 
hood amid the scenes and associations of country life, with an art- 
less, impulsive and generous nature, superior physical health, and 
a heart warm with the love of country and humanity. Her fa- 
ther is a prosperous farmer, and gave three of his sons to the 
struggle for the Union, who served honorably to the end of their 
enlistment, and one of them re-enlisted as a veteran, performing 
oftentimes the perilous duties of a spy, that he might obtain valu- 
able information to guide the movements of our forces. The 
daughter, at the breaking out of the war, was pursuing her 
studies at Washington College, in Iowa, an institution open to 
both sexes, and under the patronage of the United Presbyterian 
Church. But the sound of fife and drum, the organization of 
regiments composed of her friends and neighbors, and the enlist- 
ment of her brothers in the grand army of the Union fired her 
ardent soul with patriotism, and an intense desire to help on the 
cause in which the soldiers had taken up the implements of war- 
fare. 

For many months her thoughts were far more with the soldiers 
in the field than on the course o^ study in the college, and as 

380 



MISS MELCENIA ELLIOTT. 381 

soon as there began to be a demand for female nurses in the hos- 
pitals, she was prompt to offer her services and was accepted. 

The summer and autumn of 1862, found her in the hospitals 
in Tennessee, ready on all occasions for the most difficult posts 
of service, ministering at the bed-side of the sick and desponding, 
cheering them with her warm words of encouragement and sym- 
pathy, and her pleasant smile and ready mirthfulness, the very 
best antidote to the depression of spirits and home-sickness of the 
worn and tired soldier. In all hospital work, in the offices of 
nursing and watching, and giving of medicines, in the prepara- 
tion of special diet, in the care and attention necessary to have 
the hospital beds clean and comfortable, and the wards in proper 
order, she was untiring and never gave way to weariness or failed 
in strength. It was pleasant to see with what ease and satisfac- 
tion she could lift up a sick soldier's head, smooth and arrange 
his pillow, lift him into an easier position, dress his wounds, and 
make him feel that somebody cared for him. 

During the winter of 1862-3, she was a nurse in one of the 
hospitals at Memphis, and rendered most useful and excellent 
service. An example of her heroism and fortitude occurred here, 
that is worthy of being mentioned. In one of the hospitals there 
was a sick soldier who came from her father's neighborhood in 
Iowa, whom she had known, and for whose family she felt a 
friendly interest. She often visited him in the sick ward where 
he was, and did what she could to alleviate his sufferings, and 
comfort him in his illness. But gradually he became worse, and 
at a time when he needed her sympathy and kind attention more 
than ever, the Surgeon in charge of the hospital, issued an order 
that excluded all visitors from the wards, during those portions 
of the day when she could leave the hospital where she was on 
duty, to make these visits to her sick neiglibor and friend. The 
front entrance of the hospital being guarded, she could not gain 
admission ; but she had too much resolution, energy and courage, 
and too much kindness of heart, to be thwarted in her good in- 



382 

tentions by red tape. Finding that by scaling a high fence in 
the rear of the hospital, she could enter without being obstructed 
by guardsj and being aided in her purpose by the nurses on duty 
in the ward, she made her visits in the evening to the sick man's 
bed-side till he died. As it was his dying wish that his remains 
might be carried home to his family, none of whom were present, 
she herself undertook the difficult and responsible task. Getting 
leave of absence from her own duties, witliout the requisite funds 
for the purpose, she was able, by her frank and open address, her 
self-reliance, intelligence and courage to accomplish the task, and 
made the journey alone, with the body in charge ; all the way 
from Memphis to Washington, Iowa, overcoming all difficulties 
of procuring transportation, and reaching her destination success- 
fully. By this act of heroism, she won the gratitude of many 
hearts, and gave comfort and satisfaction to the friends and rela- 
tives of the departed soldier. 

Returning as far as St. Louis, she was transferred to the large 
military hospital at Benton Barracks and did not return to Mem- 
phis. Here for many months, during the spring, summer and 
autumn of 1863, she served most faithfully, and was considered 
one of the most efficient and capable nurses in the hospital. At 
this place she was associated with a band of noble young women, 
under the supervision of that excellent lady. Miss Emily Par- 
sons, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, who came out from her 
pleasant New England home to be at the head of the nursing 
department of tliis hospital, (then in charge of Surgeon Ira Rus- 
sell, United States Volunteers), and to do her part towards taking 
care of the sick and wounded men who had perilled their lives 
for their country. A warm friendship grew up between these 
noble women, and Miss Parsons never ceased to regard with deep 
interest, the tall, heroic, determined girl, who never allowed any 
obstacle to stand between her and any useful service she could 
render to the defenders of her country. 

Another incident of her fearless and undaunted bravery will 



MISS MELCENIA ELLIOTT. 383 

illustrate her character^ and especially the self-sacrificing spirit 
by which she was animated. During the summer of 1863^ it 
became necessary to establish a ward for cases of erysipelas^ a 
disease generating an unhealthy atmosphere and propagating 
itself by that means. The surgeon in charge^ instead of assign- 
ing a female nurse of his own selection to this ward, called for a 
volunteer J among the women nurses of the hospital. There was 
naturally some hesitancy about taking so trying and dangerous a 
position, and, seeing this reluctance on the part of others, Miss 
Elliott promptly offered herself for the place. For several 
months she performed her duties in the erysipelas ward with the 
same constancy and regard for the welfare of the patients that 
had characterized her in other positions. It was here the writer 
of this sketch first became acquainted with her, and noticed the 
cheerful and cordial manner in which she waited upon the suffer- 
ers under her care, going from one to another to perform some 
ofhce of kindness, always with words of genuine sympathy, 
pleasantry and good will. 

Late in the fall of 1863, Miss Elliott yielded to the wishes of 
the Western Sanitary Commission, and became matron of the 
Kefugee Home of St. Louis — a charitable institution made neces- 
sary by the events of the war, and designed to give shelter and 
assistance to poor families of refugees, mostly widows and chil- 
dren, who were constantly arriving from the exposed and deso- 
lated portions of Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mis- 
sissippi and Texas, sent North often by military authority as 
deck passengers on Government boats to get them away from the 
military posts in our possession further South. For one year 
Miss Elliott managed the internal affairs of this institution with 
great efficiency and good judgment, under circumstances that 
were very trying to her patience and fortitude. Many of the 
refugees were of the class called "the poor white trash^' of the 
South, filthy, ragged, proud, indolent, ill-mannered, given to the 
smoking and chewing of tobacco, often diseased, inefficient, and 



384 

either unwilling or unable to conform to the necessary regulations 
of the Home, or to do their own proper share of the work of the 
household, and the keeping of their apartments in a state of 
cleanliness and order. 

It was a great trial of her Christian patience to see families of 
children of all ages, dirty, ragged, and ill-mannered, lounging in 
the halls and at the front door, and their mothers doing little 
better themselves, getting into disputes with each other, or hover- 
ing round a stove, chewing or smoking tobacco, and leaving the 
necessary work allotted to them neglected and undone. But out 
of this material and this confusion Miss Elliott, by her efficiency 
and force of character, brought a good degree of cleanliness and 
order. Among other things she established a school in the 
Home, gathered the children into it in the evening, taught them 
to spell, read and sing, and inspired them with a desire for 
knowledge. 

At the end of a year of this kind of work Miss Elliott was 
called to the position of matron of the Soldiers' Orphans' Home, 
at Farmington, Iowa, which she accepted and filled for several 
months, with her usual efficiency and success, when, after long 
and arduous service for the soldiers, for the refugees and for the 
orphans of our country's defenders, she returned to the home of 
her family, and to the society and occupations for which she was 
preparing herself before the war. 



MARY DWIGHT PETTES 




O one who was accustomed to visit the military hospitals 
of St. Louis, during the first years of the war, the 
meeting with Mary Dwight Pettes in her ministry to 
the sick and wounded soldiers must always return as a 
pleasant and sacred memory. And such an one will not fail to 
recall how she carried to the men pleasant reading, how she sat 
by their bed-sides speaking words of cheer and sympathy, and 
singing songs of country, home, and heaven, with a voice of an- 
gelic sweetness. Nor, how after having by her own exertions 
procured melodeons for the hospital chapels, she would play for 
the soldiers in their Sabbath worship, and bring her friends to 
make a choir to assist in their religious services. 

Slender in form, her countenance radiant with intelligence, and 
her dark eyes beaming with sympathy and kindness, it was indeed 
a pleasant surprise to see one so young and delicate, going about 
from hospital to hospital to find opportunities of doing good to 
the wan and suffering, and crippled heroes, who had been brought 
from hard-fought battle-fields to be cared for at the North. 

But no one of the true Sisters of Mercy, who gave themselves 
to this service during the war, felt more intense and genuine sat- 
isfaction in her labors than she, and not one is more worthy of 
our grateful remembrance, now that she has passed away from 
the scene of her joys and her labors forever. 

Mary Dwight Pettes was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 
the year 1841, and belonged to a family who were eminent for 

49 385 



386 

their intelligence, and religious and moral worth. The circum- 
stances of her early life and education are unknown to the writer 
of this sketch, but must have been such as to develope that purity 
of mind and manners, that sweetness and amiability of temper, 
that ready sympathy and disinterestedness of purpose and con- 
duct, which, together with rare conversational and musical powers, 
she possessed in so high a degree. 

Having an uncle and his family resident in St. Louis, the first 
year of the war found her in that city, engaged in the work of 
ministering to the soldiers in the hospitals with her whole hearl 
and soul. During the first winter of the great rebellion (1862) 
St. Louis was filled with troops, and there were thirteen hospitals 
thronged with the sick and wounded from the early battle-fields 
of the war. On the 30th of January of that year she thus wrote 
to the Boston Transcript, over her own initials, some account of 
her labors and observations at that time. Speaking of the hos- 
pitals she said, " It is here that the evils and horrors of the war 
become very apparent. Here stout hearts are l)roken. You see 
great numbers of the brave young men of the Western States, 
Avho have left their homes to fight for their country. They were 
willing to be wounded, shot, to die, if need be, but after months 
of inaction they find themselves conquered by dysentery or fever. 
Some fifty or sixty each week are borne to their long home. This 
may have been unavoidable, but it is hard to bear. * * * * 
Last night I returned home in the evening. It was dark, rainy, 
cold and muddy. T passed an ambulance in the street. The tAvo 
horses had each a leader walking beside them, which indicated 
that a very sick soldier was within. It was a sad sight; and yet 
this poor man could not be moved, when he arrived at the hos- 
pital-door, until his papers were examined to see if they con- 
formed to 'Array Regulations.' I protest against the coldness 
with which the Regulations treat the sick and wounded soldiers.'^ 

No doubt her sympathetic heart protested against all delays 
and all seeming indifference to the welfare of the poor fellows on 



MARY DWIGHT PETTES. 387 

whose bravery and devotion the salvation of the country de- 
pended. 

In her devotion to the sick and wounded in the hospitals, and 
her labors of love among them, she sacrificed many of her own 
comforts and pleasures. Notwithstanding the delicacy of her own 
health she would go about among them doing them good. 

She took great interest in seeing the soldiers engaged in reli- 
gious worship, and in assisting to conduct the exercises of praise 
and thanksgiving. When these services were ended she used to 
go from ward to ward, and passing to the bed-side of those who 
were too weak to join the worship in the chapel would read to 
them the blessed words of comfort contained in the Book of Life, 
and sing to them the sweet hymn, ^^ Jesus, I love thy charming 
name." 

In one of her papers she has left this record. " For a year I 
have visited the hospitals constantly, and during that time they 
have been crowded with sick and wounded soldiers. I never 
had any idea what suffering was until I had been in the wards 
after the battles of Fort Donelson, Pittsburg Landing, and Pea 
Ridge. The poor fellows are so patient too, and so grateful for 
any little service or attention." 

In another letter, speaking of the great civil war in which we 
were then engaged, she wrote, "Still I have hope, trusting in the 
justice of God. Being a constant visitor to the hospitals in and 
about this city, I have taken great pleasure in relieving the phy- 
sical as well as the spiritual wants of the sick and wounded, as 
far as it has been in my power, proving to them that they have 
sympathizing friends near them, although their home-friends 
may be far away. I have encouraged them to be cheerful, and 
bear their sufferings with heroic fortitude, trusting in God, and a 
happier and better future. It has seemed to me that I do them 
some good when I find them watching for my coming, and that 
every face brightens as I enter the ward, while many say to me, 
^ We are always glad to see you come. It cheers and comforts us 



388 

mightily to have you come so bright and smiling, asking us how 
we do, and saying always some pleasant word, and giving us 
something good to read. Then we love to hear you sing to us. 
Sometimes it makes the tears come in our eyes, but it kind o' lifts 
us up, and makes us feel better. We sometimes wonder you 
come here so much among us poor fellows, but we have come to 
the conclusion that your heart is in the cause for which we are 
fighting, and that you want to help and cheer us so that we may 
get well and go back to our regiments, and finish up the work 
of putting doAvn this infernal rebellion.' '^ 

"One day as I lifted up the head of a poor boy, who was lan- 
guidly drooping, and smoothed and fixed his pillow, he said, 
^ Thank you; that's nice. You are so gentle and good to me 
that I almost fancy I am at home, and that sister Mary is wait- 
ing upon me.' " 

"Such expressions of their interest and gratitude," she adds, 
"encourage me in this work, and I keep on, though often my 
strength almost fails me, and my heart is filled with sadness, as I 
see one after another of the poor fellows wasting away, and in a 
few days their cots are empty and they sleep the sleep that knows 
no waking this side of the grave." 

Thus she labored on in her work of self-sacrificing love and 
devotion, with no compensation but the satisfaction that she was 
doing good, until late in the month of December, 1862, she was 
attacked with the typhoid fever, which she, no doubt, had con- 
tracted in the infected air of the hosj)itals, and died on the 14th 
of January, 1863. During her five weeks of illness her thoughts 
w«^re constantly with the soldiers, and in her delirium she would 
imagine she was among them in their sick wards, and would often 
speak to them words of consolation and sympathy. 

In a letter of Rev. Dr. Eliot, the Unitarian Pastor, of St. 
Louis, published in the Christian Register on the following May, 
he gives the impression she had left upon those with whom she 
had been sometimes associated in her labors. Miss Pettes was a 



MARY D WIGHT PETTES. 389 

Unitarian in her religious faith, and this fact was known to one 
of the excellent Chaplains who regularly officiated in the hospitals 
at St. Louis, and who belonged to the Old School Presbyterian 
Church. He had, however, been very glad of her co-operation 
and assistance in his work, and in conducting religious worship 
in the hospitals, and thus spoke of her to Dr. Eliot, some montlis 
after her death. " Chaplain P. said to me to-day, ^ Can you not 
send me some one to take the place of Mary Pettes, who died 
literally a martyr to the cause six months ago?^ ^I don't think,' 
said he, ^that you can find another as good as she, for her whole 
heart was in it, and she was like sunshine to the hospital. But,' 
he added, ^all your people [the Unitarians] work as if they 
really cared for the soldiers and loved the cause, and I want more 
of them.'" 

Such was the impression of her goodness and worth, and moral 
beauty left by this New England girl upon the minds of those 
who saw her going about in the hospitals of St. Louis, during the 
first year and a-half of the war, trying to do her part in the great 
work given us to do as a nation, and falling a martyr, quite as 
much as those who fell on the field of battle, to the cause of her 
country and liberty : — such the brief record of a true and spotless 
life given, in its virgin purity and loveliness, as a sacrifice well 
pleasing to God. 



LOUISA MAERTZ. 




URING the winter of 1863, while stationed at Helena, 
Arkansas, the writer was greatly impressed with the 
heroic devotion to the welfare of the sick soldier, of a 
lady whom he often met in the hospitals, where she 
was constantly engaged in services of kindness to the suffering 
inmates, attending to their wants, and alleviating their distress. 
He soon learned that her name was Louisa Maertz, of Quincy, 
Illinois, who had come from her home all the way to Helena — at 
a time when the navigation of the river was rendered dangerous 
by the firing of guerrillas from the shore upon the passing 
steamers — that she might devote herself to the work of a hospital 
nurse. At a later period, when he learned that she had left a 
pleasant home for this arduous service, and saw how bravely she 
endured the discomforts of hospital life in Helena, where there 
was not a single well-ordered and well-provided hospital; how 
she went from one building to another through the filthy and 
nmddy town, to carry the delicacies she had obtained from the 
Sanitary Commission, and dispense them to the sick, with her 
own hands, he was still more impressed with these evidences of her 
^^good, heroic womanhood," and her disinterested benevolence. 
Recently he has procured a few particulars of her history, which 
will serve for a brief sketch. 

Miss Maertz was born in Quincy, Illinois, in 1838. Her 
parents were of German birth, and among the early settlers of the 
place. From infancy she was of a delicate constitution, and 

390 



LOUISA MAERTZ. 391 

suffered much from ill health ; and at the age of eighteen years 
she was sent to Europe in the hope that she might derive benefit 
from the mineral springs of Germany and from travel and change 
of climate. Two years in Germany, Switzerland and Italy were 
spent in traveling and in the society of her relatives, some of 
whom were the personal friends of the Monods of Paris, Guizot, 
the Gurneys of England, Merle D'Aubigne, of Geneva, and 
other literary people of Europe, with several of whom she became 
acquainted. From this visit abroad she received much benefit, 
and her general health was greatly improved. 

From an early period she had cherished two strong aspirations, 
the desire of knowledge, and the wish to devote herself to worbs 
of charity. Her heart was always ready to sympathize with the 
sufferings and sorrows of humanity ; and the cause of the orphan, 
the slave, the poor and the helpless excited a deep interest in her 
mind, and a desire to devote herself in some way to their relief. 
After her return from Europe it became an absorbing aspiration 
and the subject of earnest prayer that God would show her some 
way in which she could be useful to humanity. 

As she was thus becoming prepared for the work upon which 
she afterwards entered, the great rebellion, which involved the 
country in the late civil war, broke forth; the early battles in 
Missouri, and at Fort Donelson and Belmont led to the estab- 
lishment of hospitals in St. Louis, at Mound City, and at Quincy, 
Illinois; and the opportunity came to Miss Maertz, whicli she 
had so long desired, to undertake some work of charity and 
benevolence. During the months of Octol)er and November, 
1861, she commenced the daily visitation of the hospitals in 
Quincy, carried with her delicacies for the sick and distributed 
them, procured the redress of any grievances they suffered, read 
the Scriptures and conversed with them, wrote letters for them to 
their friends, dressed their wounds, and furnished them books, 
papers, and sources of amusement. Although her physical 
strength at this period was very moderate, she seemed, on enter- 



392 

ing the hospital^ and witnessing the sufferings of brave men, who 
had dared everything for their country, to be infused with a new 
and strange vigor that sustained her through every exertion. 

In particular cases of tedious convalescence, retarded by infe- 
rior hospital accommodations, she — with her parents' consent — 
obtained permission to take them home, and nurse them till they 
were restored to health. Thus she labored on through the fall 
and winter of 1861-2 till the battles of Shiloh and Pea Ridge 
filled the hospitals with >vounded men, at St. Louis and Mound 
City, and at Louisville and Evansville and Paducah, and she 
began to feel that she must go where her services were more 
needed, and give herself wholly to this wx)rk of caring for and 
nursing the wounded patriots of the war. 

After waiting some time for an opportunity to go she wrote to 
Mr. James E. Yeatman, at St. Louis, the agent of Miss Dorothea 
L. Dix for the appointment of women nurses in the hospitals of 
the Western Department, and was accepted. On reporting her- 
self at St. Louis she was commissioned as a nurse, and in the fall 
of 1862 proceeded to Helena, where the army of the Southwest 
had encamped the previous July, under Major-General Curtis, 
and where every church and several private buildings had to be 
converted into hospitals to accommodate the sick of his army. 

It was here, during the winter of 1863, that the writer of this 
sketch first met with Miss Maertz, engaged in the work of a hos- 
pital nurse, enduring with rare heroism sacrifices and discomforts, 
labors and watchings in the service of the sick soldiers that won 
the reverence and admiration of all who saw this gentle woman 
thus nobly employed. It was of her the following paragraph 
was written in the History of the Western Sanitary Commis- 
sion. 

"Another one we also know whose name is likewise in this 
simple record, who, at Helena, Arkansas, in the fall and winter 
of 1862-3, was almost the only female nurse in the hospitals there, 
going from one building to another, in which the sick were quar- 



LOUISA MAERTZ. 393 

tered, when the streets were almost impassable with mud, admin- 
istering sanitary stores and making, delicate preparations of food, 
spending her own money in procuring milk and other articles 
that were scarce and difficult to obtain, and doing an amount of 
work which few persons could sustain, living without the plea- 
sant society to which she had been accustomed at home, never 
murmuring, always cheerful and kind, preserving in the midst of 
a military camp such gentleness, strength and purity of character 
that all rudeness of speech ceased in her presence, and as she 
went from room to room she was received with silent benedic- 
tions, or an audible ' God bless you, dear lady,' from some poor 
sufferer's heart." 

The last time I saw Miss Maertz, while engaged in her hos- 
pital work, was at the grave of a soldier, who was buried at 
Helena in the spring of 1863. He was one of the persecuted 
Union men of Arkansas, who had enlisted in the Union army on 
the march of General Curtis through Arkansas, and had fallen 
sick at Helena. For several weeks Miss Maertz had nursed and 
cared for him with all a woman's tenderness and delicacy, and 
perceiving that he must die had succeeded in sending a message to 
his wife, who lived sixty miles in the interior of Arkansas, within 
the enemy's lines. On the afternoon of his death and but a few 
hours before it she arrived, having walked the whole distance 
on foot with great difficulty, because she was partially blind; but 
had the satisfaction of receiving the parting words of her hus- 
band and attending his burial. Miss Maertz sent word to me, 
asking me to perform the burial service, and the next day I met 
her leading the half-blind widow, in her poverty and sorrow, to 
the grave. Some months later this poor soldier's widow came to 
the Refugee Home, at St. Louis, and was cared for, and being 
recognized and the scene of the lonely burial referred to, she 
related with tears of gratitude the kindness she received from the 
good lady, who nursed her husband in his last illness at Helena. 

At a later period in the service, Miss Maertz was transferred 

60 



394 

to the hospitals at Vicksburg^ where she continued her work of 
benevolence till she was obliged to return home to restore her 
own exhausted energies. At this time her parents urged her to 
go with them to Europe, wishing to take her away from scenes 
of suffering, and prostrating disease, but she declined to go, and, 
on regaining a measure of health, entered the service again and 
continued in it at New Orleans to the end of the war. 

In real devotion to the welfare of the soldiers of the Union; 
in high religious and patriotic motives; in the self-sacrificing 
spirit with which she performed her labors; in the heroism with 
which she endured hardship for the sake of doing good; in the 
readiness with which she gave up her own interests and the offer 
of personal advantages and pleasure to serve the cause of pat- 
riotism and humanity, she had few equals. 



MRS. HARRIET R. COLFAX. 




HIS lady whose services merit all the praise which has 
been bestowed upon them, is a resident of Michigan 
City, Indiana, the still youthful widow of a near rela- 
tive of the Honorable Schuyler Colfax, the present 
Speaker of the House of Representatives. 

Her father, during her youth, w^as long an invalid, and his 
enforced seclusion from all business pursuits was spent in bestow- 
ing instruction upon his children. His conversations with his 
children, and the lessons in history which he gave them were 
made the means of instilling great moral ideas, and amidst all 
others an ardent love of their native country and its institutions. 
At the same period of the life of Mrs. Colfax, she was blest with 
a mother wliose large and active benevolence led her to spend 
much time in visiting and ministering to the sick. Her daughter 
often accompanied her, and as often was sent alone upon like 
errands. Thus she learned the practice of the sentiments which 
caused her, in the hour of her country's trial, to lend such ener- 
getic and cheerful aid to its wounded defenders. 

Previous to the commencement of the war Mrs. Colfax had lost 
her husband and her father. Her mother remained to advise 
and guide the young widow and her fatherless children, and it 
was to her that she turned for counsel, when, on the announce- 
ment of the need of female nurses in the hospitals that were so 
soon filled with sick and wounded, Mrs. Colfax felt herself im- 
pelled to devote herself to this service and ministry. 

Her mother and other friends disapproved of her gomg, and 

395 



396 

said all they could in opposition. She listened, and delayed, but 
finally felt that she must yield to the impulse. The opposition 
Avas withdrawn, and on the last of October, 1861, she started for 
St. Louis to enter the hospitals there. 

Her heart was very desolate as she entered this strange city 
alone, at ten o'clock at night. Mr. Yeatman, with whom com- 
munication had been opened relative to her coming, had neglected 
to give her definite directions how to proceed. But she heard 
some surgeons talking of the hospitals, and learned that they 
belonged to them. From them she obtained the address of Mr. 
Yeatman. A gentleman, as she left the cars, stepped forward 
and kindly and respectfully placed her in the omnibus which was 
to take her across the river. She turned to thank him, but he 
was gone. Yet these occurrences, small as they were, had given 
her renewed courage — she no longer felt quite friendless, but went 
cheerfully upon her way. 

She proceeded to the Fifth Street Hospital, where Mr. Yeat- 
man had his quarters, and was admitted by the use of his name. 
The night nurse, Mrs. Gibson, took kind charge of her for that 
night, and in the morning she was introduced to the matron, 
Mrs. Plummer, and to Mr. Yeatman. She had her first sight 
of wounded men on the night of her arrival, and the thought of 
their sufferings, and of how much could be done to alleviate 
them, made her forget herself, an obliviousness from which she 
did not for weeks recover. 

She was assigned to the first ward in which there had been till 
then no female nurse, and soon found full employment for hands, 
mind and heart. The reception room for patients was on the 
same floor with her ward, and the sufferers had to be taken 
through it to reach the others, so that she was forced to witness 
every imaginable phase of suflFering and misery, and her sym])a- 
thies never became bkinted. Many of these men lived but a 
short time after being brought in, and one man standing with his 
knapsack on to have his name and regiment noted down, fell to 



MES. HAEEIET E. COLFAX. 397 

the floor as it was supposed in a swoon^ but was found to be 
dead. 

For some time when men were dying all around with typhus 
fever and wounds, no clergyman of any denomination visited 
them. Mrs. Colfax and other ladies w^ould often at their request 
offer up prayers, but they felt that regular religious ministrations 
were needed. After a time through the intercession of a lady, a 
resident of St. Louis, the Rev. Dr. Schuyler came often to supply 
this want, giving great comfort to the sufferers. 

About this time, the ward surgeon was removed, and another 
substituted in his place, Dr. Paddock. This gentleman thus 
speaks of the services and character of Mrs. Colfax : 

St. Louis, March 2d, 1866. 
" Among the many patriotic and benevolent Christian ladies who volunteered 
their services to aid, comfort, and alleviate the suffering of the sick and 
wounded soldiers of the Union Army in the late wicked and woful Eebellion, 
I know of none more deserving of honorable mention and memory, than Mrs. 
Harriet E. Colfax. I first met her in the Fifth Street General Hospital of this 
city, where I was employed in the spring of 1862 ; and subsequently in the 
General Hospital, at Jefferson Barracks, in 1863. In both these hospitals she 
was employed in the wards under my care, and subject to my immediate orders and 
observation In both, she was uniformly tlie same industrious, indefatigable, 
attentive, kind, and sympathizing nurse and friend of the sick and wounded 
soldier. She prepared delicacies and cordials, and often obtained them to pre- 
pare from her friends abroad, in addition to such as were furnished by the Sani- 
tary Commission. She administered them with her own hands in such a man- 
ner as only a sympathizing and loving woman can ; and thus won the heartfelt 
gratitude and affection of every soldier to whom it was her duty and her de- 
light to administer. No female nurse in either of the hospitals above named, 
and there was a large number in each of them, was more universally beloved and 
respected, than was Mrs. Colfax. I had not the opportunity to witness her ser- 
vices and privations, and vexations on hospital steamers, or elsewhere than in 
the two places named above ; but I know that they were considerable ; and that 
everywhere and under all circumstances, she was alike active and honored." 

In Dr. Paddock, Mrs. Colfax truly found a friend, and she was 
able to accomplish a greater amount of good under his kind di- 
rections. The Ward was crowded. The wounded arrived from 



398 woman's work in the civil war. 

Fort Donelson in a miserable condition. From exposure, many 
were dangerously ill with pneumonia, and died very soon ; few 
recovered, but the wounded did much better than the sick, and 
were so patient and cheerful, that even those suffering from the 
worst wounds, or amputations, would hardly have been known 
not to be well, save by their pale faces and weak voices. Many 
would not give way till the last moment, but with strong cour- 
age, and brave cheerfulness, would close their eyes on things of 
earth, and pass silently into the unseen world. 

In the spring, Mrs. Colfax, finding herself much worn by se- 
vere work and frequent colds, gladly availed herself of the 
change offered by a trip on the Hospital-boat, Louisiana, then 
just fitted up by the Sanitary Commission. 

At Cairo, they received orders to proceed to Island No. 10, 
and there unexpectedly found themselves in the well-known bat- 
tle which took place at that point on the 16th, 17th, and 18th of 
March, 1862. 

The Batteries of the enemy, on the banks and Island, were en- 
gaged with the Union gunboats. The firing was incessant and 
protracted, but not very disastrous. At last the firing from one 
of the gunboats resulted in the killing and wounding of a num- 
ber of the enemy, which last were brought on board the Loui- 
siana for care. After remaining there ten days, the Louisiana 
returned to Cairo, and receiving on board the wounded from 
Mound City Hospital, carried them to Cincinnati. Mrs. Colfax 
and her friends were very busy in the care of these poor men, many 
of them very low, giving unceasing attentions to them, and even 
then feeling that they had not done half enough. 

Immediately after their return to Cairo, they left for Savannah 
and Pittsburg Landing, on the Tennessee River. They took 
from the latter place two hundred and fifty men, leaving again 
before the battle of Shiloh. This took place immediately after 
they left, and they ran up to St. Louis, landed their freight of 
wounded, and returned immediately for another load. 



MES. HARRIET R. COLFAX. 399 

Two hundred and seventy-live desperately wounded men from 
the battle of Shiloh^ formed this load. They quickly made their way 
Northward with their freight of misery and suffering. This was be- 
yond the power of the imagination to conceive, and the nurses were 
too busy in their cares to sleep or eat. The sorrowful labor was 
at last performed, the wounded were transferred to the hospitals 
at St. Louis, and Mrs. Colfax returned to her duties there. 

After remaining some time in the Fifth Street Hospital, and 
making occasional trips on the Hospital-boats, Mrs. Colfax was 
sent to the Hospital at Jefferson Barracks, where she remained a 
long time, and where her services, so eminently kind, efficient 
and womanly, met the success they so much deserved. 

She remained in the service as a hospital nurse two years and 
a half. Except while on the hospital boats, and during brief 
stays at the various hospitals of the South-west, while attached 
to the Transport Service, she spent the entire time at Fifth Street 
Hospital, St. Louis, and at Jefferson Barracks. In each and 
every place her services were alike meritorious, and though she 
encountered many annoyances, and unpleasant incidents, she does 
not now regret the time and labor she bestowed in doing her share 
of the woman's work of the war. 

Like all earnest, unselfish workers, in this eminently unselfish 
service, Mrs. Colfax delights to bear testimony to the efficient 
labors of others. 

All who worked with her were her friends, and she has the 
fullest appreciation of their best qualities, and their earnest 
efforts. Among those she names thus feelingly, are Mrs. Plum- 
mer, the matron of the Fifth Street Hospital, St. Louis, Miss 
Addie E. Johnson, Mrs. Gibson, and others, her fellow-workers 
there. 

Early in 1864, quite worn out with her protracted labors, Mrs. 
Colfax returned to her home in Michigan City, where she still 
resides, honored, beloved and respected, as her character and ser- 
vices demand. 



MISS CLARA DAVIS 




.^ HIS lady, now the wife of the Rev. Edward Abbott, 
of Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, was one of the ear- 
liest, most indefatigable and useful of the laborers for 
Union soldiers during the war. Her labors com- 
menced early in the winter of 1861-62, in the hospitals of Phila- 
delphia, in whijsh city she was then residing. 

Her visits were at first confined to the Broad and Cherry Street 
Hospital, and her purpose at first was to minister entirely to the 
religious wants of the sick, wounded and dying soldiers. Her 
interest in the inmates of that institution was never permitted to 
die out. 

It was not patriotism, — for Miss Davis was not a native of 
this country — but rather a profound sympathy with the cause in 
which they were engaged which led her, in company w^th the 
late Rev. Dr. Vaughan of Philadelphia (of whose family she was 
an inmate) to visit this place and aid him in his philanthropic 
and official duties. The necessity of the case led her to labor 
regularly and assiduously to supply the lack of many comforts 
which was felt here, and the need of woman's nursing and com- 
forting ways. By the month of May, ensuing, she was giving 
up her whole time to these ministrations, and this at a consider- 
able sacrifice, and extending her efforts so as to alleviate the 
temporal condition of the sufferers, as well as to minister to their 
spiritual ones. 

In the early part of this summer, memorable as the season of 

400 



MISS CLARA DAVIS. 401 

the Peninsula Campaign^ she, in company with Mrs. M. M. Hus- 
band, of Philadelphia, entered upon the transport service on the 
James and Potomac Pivers, principally on board the steamer 
"John Brooks'^ — passing to and fro with the sick and wounded 
between Harrison's Landing, Fortress Monroe and Philadelphia. 
This joint campaign ended with a sojourn of two months at Mile 
Creek Plospital, Fortress Monroe. 

Her friend, Mrs. H. thus speaks of her. "A more lovely 
Christian character, a more unselfishly devoted person, than 
Miss Davis, I have never known. Her happy manner of 
approaching the soldiers, especially upon religious subjects, was 
unequalled ; the greatest scoffer would listen to her with respect 
and attention, while the m^ajority followed her with a glance of 
veneration as if she were a being of a superior order. I heard 
one say, ^ there must be wings hidden beneath her cloak.' '^ 

After leaving Fortress Monroe, Miss Davis returned to Phila- 
delphia, and recruited her supplies for the use of the soldiers. 
She was anxious to be permitted to serve in the field hospitals, 
but owing to unusual strictness of regulation at that time, she 
was not permitted to do so. Later in the season she accompanied 
Mrs. Husband to Frederick City, Harper's Ferry and Antietam, 
at which latter place, by the invitation of Surgeon Vanderkieft, 
and Miss Hall, she remained several weeks doing very acceptable 
service. 

During the winter of 1863 she renewed her efforts to gain per- 
mission to serve in the field hospitals of the army, then in winter 
quarters between Falmouth and Acquia Creek, but was again 
repulsed. In the spring she once more renewed her efforts, but 
without success. Again visiting Washington, she was requested 
to become the agent of the Sanitary Commission, at Camp Parole, 
Annapolis, Maryland. 

She commenced her laborious duties at Camp Parole about the 
1st of May, 1863. She made numerous friends here, among all 
classes with whom she came in contact, and did a most admirable 

61 



402 

work among the returned prisoners. She remained here the 
whole summer, never allowing herself one day's absence, until 
October. She suffered from ague, and her labors were far too 
great for her strength. Camp, or typhoid fever, seized her, and 
after long striving against weakness ajid pain, she was obliged to 
return to her home to recruit. She made great efforts to again 
take up her work where she had been obliged to leave it, but her 
strength would not admit. 

She did not recover from this illness until the following Feb- 
ruary, nor even then could she be said to have fully recovered. 
As soon as the state of her health permitted, indeed before her 
physician gave his consent, she resumed her labors at Camp 
Parole, but in a few weeks the fever set in again, and further 
service was rendered impossible. Thus closed the ministrations 
in field and hospital, of one, of whom a friend who knew her 
well, and appreciated her fully, simply says, ^^Her deeds were 
beyond praise.^' 

Her health was so undermined by her labors, that it has never 
been fully recovered, and she still suffers, as she perhaps will to 
the end of her life, from the weakness and diseases induced, by 
her unwonted exertions, and the fevers which so greatly pros- 
trated her. 

Nearly two years, as we have seen, she gave to her labors in 
camp and hospital, labors which, as we have seen, were princi- 
pally directed to the relief of physical sufferings, though she 
never forgot to mingle with them the spiritual ministrations 
which were the peculiar feature of her usefulness. 

The interest of Miss Davis was not limited to soldiers in hos- 
pitals, any more than were her labors confined to, efforts for their 
relief. From her numerous friends, and from societies, she was 
in constant receipt of money, delicacies, reading matter, and many 
other things, both valuable and useful to the soldiers, and not 
embraced in the government supplies, nor sold by sutlers. These 
she distributed among both sick and well, as their needs required. 



MISS CLARA DAVIS. 403 

"She corresponded largely with the friends of sick soldiers; 
she represented their needs to those who had the means to relieve 
them; she used her influence in obtaining furloughs for the con- 
valescents, and discharges for the incurables; she importuned 
tape-bound officials for passes, that the remains of the poor unpaid 
soldier might be buried beside his parents; she erected head- 
boards at every soldier's grave at that time in the cemetery at 
West Philadelphia, as a temporary memorial and record/' 

In the heat of Virginian summers, and the inclement winters, 
it was with her the same steady unchanged work, till sickness 
put an end to her labors. Till the last her intercourse with the 
soldiers was always both pleasant, and in the highest sense profit- 
able. 



MRS. R. H. SPENCER. 




F all tilt band of noble women who during the war 
gave their time and best labors with devotedness and 
singleness of purpose to the care of the suffering de- 
fenders of their country, few, perhaps, have been as 
efficient and useful in their chosen sphere as Mrs. Spencer. 

That she left a home of quiet ease and comfort, and gave her- 
self, with her whole soul, to the cause she loved, is not more than 
very many others have done, but she incited her husband to 
offer himself to his country, and gladly accompanied him, sharing 
all his privations, and creating for him, amid the rudest sur- 
roundings, home with all its comforts and enjoyments. 

At the commencement of the war, Mrs. Spencer was living at 
Oswego, New York, which had been her residence for many 
years. Her husband, Captain E,. H. Spencer, had been formerly 
commander of several of the finest vessels which sail from that 
port in the trade upon the upper lakes. But for some years he 
had remained on shore, and devoted himself to the occupation of 
teaching, in which he had a very fine reputation. Mrs. Spencer 
was also a teacher, and both were connected with the public 
schools for which that city is celebrated. 

Mr. Spencer was a member of that wing of the Democratic 
party which opposed the war, and his age already exempted him 
from military duty. 

When, therefore, immediately after the battle of Antietam he 
announced to Mrs. Spencer that he had resolved to enlist in the 

404 




Mils. R.H.Spencer. 



MRS. E. H. SPENCER. 405 

Regiment then rapidly forming in that city^ she knew well, as 
did all who knew him, that only an imperative sense of personal 
duty had led to the decision. 

Oswego had to mourn the most irreparable losses in that battle. 
The flower of her young men had been cut down, and many 
homes made desolate. Mr. Spencer, like many others, felt im- 
pelled to add himself to the patriot ranks, and help to fill the 
gaps left by the fallen. 

. Mrs. Spencer, whose name and person had long been familiar 
to the sick and suffering at home, had often longed for the power 
of ministering to those Avho had taken their lives in their hands, 
and gone forth in the service of their country. And she now not 
only gave her husband to the w^ork, but resolved to aid him in 
it. She might not stand by his side, in the armed ranks, but 
there was, for her, service as arduous and important, for which she 
was peculiarly fitted, not only by the extreme kindness and 
benevolence of her nature, but by experience in the care of the 
sick. 

When her husband had enlisted and was sworn into the ser- 
vice, she, too, took the oath to faithfully serve her country, and 
her place by his side. 

The regiment (one hundred and forty-seventh New York) left 
Oswego the 27th of September, 1862, and arrived in Washington 
the 1st of October. Mrs. Spencer, fatigued and ill, overcome 
with the excitement of preparation, perhaps, and the grief of 
parting with her friends, found herself thus in a strange city and 
upon the threshold of a strange new life. She obtained a little 
sleep upon a bench outside the Soldiers' Rest, and though scarcely 
refreshed commenced her duties early on the following morning 
by feeding from her own stores six wounded men from the battle 
of Antietam, who had arrived during the night. After making 
tea for them, and doing all she could for their comfort, she was 
o])liged to leave, as the regiment was en route for Arlington 
Heights. 



406 woman's work in the civil ayar. 

Mrs. Spencer remained in the neighborhood of Washington 
until the middle of the December following. The regiment had 
gone forward some time previously, leaving herself and husband 
in charge of the hospital stores. Her husband was ward-master 
of the hospital, and she was matron and nurse. 

When the hospital tents and stores were sent to Acquia Creek, 
to the regiment, Mr. and Mrs. Spencer remained for a time to 
care for the sick and wounded in Washington, and volunteered 
to take care of the wounded from the first battle of Fredericks- 
burg, who were brought to the Patent Office. 

On the 12th of January Mr. Spencer went to join the regiment 
at Falmouth, while Mrs. Spencer proceeded to New York for 
supplies, and on the 17th returned and joined the regiment at 
Belle Plain, proceeding almost immediately to Wind Mill Point, 
in company with the sick and wounded removed thither. Here 
she remained six months, engaged in her arduous duties as matron 
in the hospital of the First Corps, to which her husband was also 
attached. 

From this place they were transferred to Belle Plain, and afrer 
a short stay from thence to Acquia Creek, where they remained 
attached to the hospital until the 13th of June, when they were 
ordered to report to their regiment, then lying near Falmouth. 

Mrs. Spencer had by this time, by much practice, become an 
expert horse-woman, often foraging on her own account for sup- 
plies for the sick and wounded under her care. By the order of 
Dr. Hurd, the Medical Director of the First Corps, she took with 
her the horse she had been accustomed to ride, and a few days 
afterwards commenced on horseback the march to Gettysburg — 
now become historical. 

Nearly two weeks were consumed in this march, one of which 
was spent in an encampment on Broad Run. 

Mrs. Spencer's horse carried, besides herself, her bedding, sun- 
dry utensils for cooking, and a scanty supply of clothing, about 
three hundred and fifty pounds of supplies for the sick. In 



MRS. E. H. SPENCER. 407 

addition to this she often took charge of huge piles of coats be- 
longing to the Aveary men, which otherwise they would have 
thrown away as superfluous during the intense heat of midday, 
to miss them sorely afterward amid the twilight dews, or the 
drenching rains. 

The battle had already commenced as the long slow-moving 
train, to which they were attached, approached Gettysburg, and 
the awful roar of cannon and the scattering rattle of musketry 
reached their ears. 

The day previous an ammunition-wagon in their train had 
exploded, and Mrs. Spencer had torn up the thick comforter 
which usually formed her bed, that the driver of the wagon, who 
was fearfully burned, might be wrapped in the cotton and ban- 
daged by the calico of which it was made. Mr. Spencer remained 
to care for the man, and at night — a dark and rainy night — she 
found herself for the first time separated from her husband, and 
unprotected by any friend. But the respectful and chivalric in- 
stincts of American soldiers proved sufficient for her defense 
against any evil that might have menaced her. They spread 
their rubber blankets upon the muddy ground, and made a sort 
of tent with others, into w^hich she crept and slept guarded and 
secure through the long dark hours. At morning they vied with 
each other in preparing her breakfast, and waiting upon her with 
every possible respect and attention, and she went on her way, 
rested and refreshed. 

In the course of the morning Mr. Spencer rejoined her. After 
the firing was heard, telling the tale of the awful conflict that 
was progressing, she felt that she could no longer remain with 
the halting train, but must press on to some point where her work 
of mercy might commence. 

This was found in an unoccupied barn, not far from the field, 
where, by the assistance of her husband, she got a fire and soon 
had her camp-kettles filled with fragrant cofPee, which she distrib- 



408 woman's work in the civil war. 

utecl to every weaiy and wounded man who applied for the 
refreshing beverage. 

Wounded in considerable numbers from the Eleventh Corps 
were placed in this barn to gain which they crossed the fields 
between two rows of artillery^ stationed there. Mrs. Spencer had 
two knapsacks and two haversacks suspended from her saddle, 
and supplied with materials for making tea, coffee and beef-tea— 
with these and crackers, she contrived to provide refreshment. 
Meanwhile the balls and shells were falling fast around the barn, 
and orders came to move further back. 

But this brave woman with her husband chose to move forward 
rather, in search of her own regiment, thougli the enemy were then 
gaining upon the Union troops. As they went on toward the 
battle, they found their regiment stationed on a hill above them, 
and halting they made a fire and prepared refreshments which 
they gave to all they could reach. 

While working here the Surgeon of the First Division came 
hurrying past, and peremptorily called on Mrs. Spencer to go 
and help form a hospital. When she and Mr, Spencer found 
that many men of their own regiment were in the train of ambu- 
lances which was going slowly past with the sufferers, they 
followed. 

They crossed to the White Church, on the Baltimore turnpike, 
about four miles from Gettysburg, and reached there after dark. 
Tlicy had sixty wounded undergoing every variety of suffering 
and torture. The church was small, having but one aisle, and 
the narrow seats were fixtures. A small building adjoining pro- 
vided boards which were laid on the to23S of the seats, and 
covered with straw, and on these the wounded were laid. 

The supply train had been sent back fourteen miles. A num- 
ber of surgeons were there, but none had instruments, and could 
do very little for the wounded, and Mrs. Spencer found the stores 
contained in her knapsacks and haversacks most useful in refresh- 
ing these sufferers. 



MRS. R. H. SPENCER. 409 

In the course j£ a few days the confusion subsided. The hos- 
pital was thoroughly organized. The Sanitary and Christian 
Commissions and the people came and aided them, and order 
came out of the chaos that followed this awful battle. 

On the 5th of July, the buildings and tents which formed this 
hospital contained over six hundred Union troops, and more than 
one hundred wounded prisoners, and Mrs. Spencer found herself 
constantly and fully employed, nursing the wounded, and daily 
riding into town for supplies. 

It was here that she gained, and very justly as it would seem, 
the credit of saving the life of a wounded soldier, a townsman of 
her own. The man was shot in the mouth and throat, a huge 
gaping orifice on the side of his neck showing where the ball 
found exit. The surgeons gave him but a few days to live, as he 
could swallow nothing, the liquids which were all he even could 
attempt to take, passing out by the wound. Tearfully he be- 
sought Mrs. Spencer^s aid. Young and strong, and full of life, 
he could not contemplate a death of slow starvation. Mrs. 
Spencer went to the surgeons and besought their aid. ]N"one of 
them could give hope, for none conceived the strength of will in 
nurse or patient. 

^^Do as I tell you , and you shall not die,'' said Mrs. 

Spencer. ^^Can you bear to go without food a week?" 

Gratefully the man signed ^^yes," and with the tough unyield- 
ing patience of a hero, he bore the pains of wound and hunger. 
In the meantime the chief appliance was the basin of pure cold 
water from which he was directed to keep his wound continually 
wet, that horrid wound which it seemed no human skill could 
heal. 

In a few days the inflammation began to subside, even the sur- 
geons decided the symptoms good, and began to watch the case 
with interest. The ragged edges of the wound, when the swell- 
ing subsided, could be closed up. Then, by direction of his 
kind nurse, he plunged his face into a basin of broth, and supped 

0.2 



410 woman's woek in the civil war. 

from it strength^ since it did not all escape from the still unhealed 
wound. Every day witnessed an improvement. In a little time 
he took his food like a human being; each day witnessed new 
strength and healing, and then he was saved, and the nurse 
proved wiser, for once, than the doctor! 

For three weeks Mrs. Spencer remained in the White Church 
Hospital. She then accompanied some wounded to JSTew York 
City, and took a brief respite from her duties, and the awful 
scenes she had witnessed. 

On her return to Gettysburg, she received as a mark of the es- 
teem felt for her by those who had witnessed her labors and devo- 
tion to the work, and the confidence reposed in her, the appoint- 
ment of Agent of the State of ISTew York, in the care of its sick 
and wounded soldiers in the field. Large discretionary powers, 
both as to the purchase and the distribution of supplies, were 
granted her ; and every effort was made to have this appointment 
distinguished as a mark of the high appreciation and esteem 
which she had won in the discharge of her duties. 

As her husband was detailed as clerk in the Medical Purvey- 
or's Office, at Gettysburg, she remained there in the active per- 
formance of her duties for a considerable time. 

Beside the supplies furnished by the State of IN'ew York, a 
large amount were entrusted to her, by various Ladies' Aid Soci- 
eties, and kindred associations. 

After leaving Gettysburg, Mrs. Spencer was variously but use- 
fully employed at various places, and in various ways, but always 
making her duties as State agent for the New York troops promi- 
nent, and of the first importance. She was for some time at 
Brandy Station. While there her husband received his dis- 
charge from the Volunteer Service, but immediately entered the 
regular service, as Hospital Steward, and was attached to the 
Medical Purveyor's Department. 

From Brandy Station, Mrs. Spencer went to Alexandria, and 
remained there until after the battle of the Wilderness, when she 



MRS. E. H. SPENCER. 411 

was ordered by the Surgeon-General to repair to Rappahan- 
nock Station, with needful supplies for the wounded. On arriv- 
ing there, no wounded were found, and it was rumored that the 
ambulances containing them had been intercepted by the enemy, 
and turned another way. 

The party therefore returned to Alexandria, and there received 
orders to repair with stores to Belle Plain. The Steamer on 
which Mrs. Spencer was, arrived at day-break at its destination, 
but she could not for some time get on shore. As soon as possi- 
ble she landed, anxious to let her services be of some avail to the 
many wounded who stood in immediate need of assistance, and 
thinking she might at least make coflPee or tea for some of them. 

After distributing what supplies she had, she found in an- 
other part of the field several Theological Students, delegates 
of the Sanitary Commission, who were making coffee in camp 
kettles for the wounded. Her services were thankfully accepted 
by them. All the day, and far into the night they worked, 
standing inches deep in the tenacious Virginia mud, till thou- 
sands had been served. 

All the afternoon the wounded were arriving. Thousands 
were laid upon the ground, upon the hill-side, perhaps under the 
shelter of a bush, perhaps with only the sky above them, from 
which the rain poured in torrents. 

All with scarcely an exception were patient, cheerful, and 
thoughtful — when asked as to their own condition, seeming more 
troubled by the risk she ran in taking cold, than of their own 
sufferings. 

Late in the night, she remembered that she was alone, and 
must rest somewhere. A wagon driver willingly gave her his 
place in the wagon, and thoroughly drenched with rain, and cov- 
ered with mud, she there rested for the first time in many hours. 
Her sad and anxious thoughts with her i)hysical discomforts pre- 
vented sleep, but with the dawn she had rested so much, as to be 
abL' to resume her labors. 



412 

Another, and another day passed. The woanded from those 
fearful battles continued to arrive, and to be cared for, as well as 
was possible under the circumstances. The workers were shortly 
afterward made as comfortable as was possible. For two weeks 
Mrs. Spencer remained, and labored at Belle Plain, remained till 
her clothing of which, not expecting to remain, she had brought 
no change, was nearly worn out. The need was so pressing, of 
care for the wounded, that she scarcely thought of herself. 

In the latter part of May, she left Belie Plain, and went to 
Port Poyal, where similar scenes were enacted, save that there a 
shelter was provided. She had joined forces with the Sanitary 
Commission, and the facilities were now good and the w^orkers 
numerous, yet it was barely possible, with all these, and with 
Government and Commission supplies, and private contributions, 
to feed the applicants. 

The Medical Purveyor's boat with her husband on board, hav- 
ing arrived, Mrs. Spencer proceeded on that boat to White House, 
where she was placed in Superintendence of the Government 
Cooking Barge, continuing at the same time her supervision of 
the wants of the New York soldiery. 

Here they fed the first wounded who arrived from the field, 
and here Mrs. Spencer continued many days directing the feed- 
ing of thousands more, ever remembering the regiments from her 
ow^n State, as her special charge, and assisted by many volunteers 
and others in her arduous task. 

On the 18th of June, 1864, Mrs. Spencer arrived at City Point. 
The wounded were still arriving, and there was enough for all to 
do. A Hospital was here established, a mile from the landing. 
The Government kitchen was kept up, till the hospitals and their 
kitchens were in full operation, when it was discontinued, and 
Mrs. Spencer relieved from her double task. 

From that time, Mrs. Spencer confined herself mostly to the 
duties of her agency, and continued to make City Point her head- 
quarters and base of operations until the close of the war closed 



MRS. R. H. SPENCER. 413 

the agency^ and left her free once again to seek the welcome se- 
clusion of her home. 

She occasionally visited the General Hospitals to distribute 
supplies to her New York soldiers and others, but these being 
now well organized, did not, owing to the plenty of attendants 
greatly need her services, and they were mostly confined to visits 
to soldiers in the field, at the Front, Field Hospitals, and in the 
Rifle Pits.* 

Her equestrian skill now often came in use. Often a ride of 
from twenty to forty miles in the day would enable her to visit 
some outlying regiment or picket station, or even to reach the 
Rifle Pits that honeycombed plain and hill-side all about Peters- 
burg and Richmond, and return the same day. On these occa- 
sions she was warmly and enthusiastically welcomed by the sol- 
diers, not only for what slie brought, but for the comfort and 
solace of her presence. 

She was often in positions of great peril from whizzing shot 
and bursting shell, but was never harmed during these dangerous 
visits. On one occasion, she was probably by reason of her black 
hat and feather, mistaken for an officer, as she for a moment care- 
lessly showed the upper part of her person, from a slight emi- 
nence near the rifle pits, and was fired at by one of the enemy's 
sharp-shooters. The ball lodged in a tree, close by her side, 
from which she deliberately dug it out with her penknife, retain- 
ing it as a memento of her escape. 

Few of us whose days have been passed in the serene quietude 
of home, can imagine the comfort and joy her presence and cheer- 
ing words brought to the ^' boys'' undergoing the privations and 
discomforts of their station at the '^ Front," in those days of peril 
and siege. As she approached, her name would be heard passing 
from man to man, with electric swiftness, and often the shouts 



* Every facility was furnished her by the various officers in command, and 
a special and permanent pass by General Grant. 



414 

that accompanied it, would receive from the enemy a warlike re- 
sponse in the strange music of the whistling shot, or the burst- 
ing shell. 

Through all this she seemed to bear a charmed life. " I never 
believed I should be harmed by shot or shell," she says, and her 
simple faith was justified. 

She even escaped nearly unharmed the fearful peril of the 
great explosion at City Point, when, as it is now supposed, by 
rebel treachery, the ammunition barge was fired, and hundreds 
of human beings without an instant^s warning, were hurried into 
eternity. 

When this event occurred, she was on horseback near the 
landing, and in turning to flee was struck, probably by a piece 
of shell, in the side. Almost as by a miracle she escaped with 
only a terrible and extensive bruise, and a temporary paralysis of 
the lower limbs. The elastic steel wires of her crinoline, had 
resisted the deadly force of the blow, which otherwise would 
undoubtedly have killed her. A smaller missile, nearly cut away 
the string of her hat, which was found next day covered by the 
ghastly smear of human blood and flesh, which also sprinkled all 
her garments. 

After the surrender of Richmond, Mrs. Spencer, with a party 
of friends, visited that city, and she records that she experienced 
a very human sense of satisfaction, as she saw some rebel pris- 
oners marching into that terrible Libby Prison, to take the place 
of the Union prisoners who had there endured such fearful and 
nameless sufferings. 

On the 8th of April the President came to visit the hospitals 
at City Point, shaking hands with the convalescents, who were 
drawn up to receive him, and speaking cheering words to all. A 
week later he had fallen the victim of that atrocious plot which 
led to his assassination. 

Mrs. Spencer remained at City Point, engaged in her duties, 
till all the wounded had been removed, and the hospitals broken 



MES. E. H. SPENCEE. 415 

I 

up. On the 31st of May^ she went on the medical supply boat 
to Washington. She there offered her services to aid in any way 
in care of the wounded, while she remained, which she did for 
several days. About the middle of June she once more found 
herself an inmate of her own home, and, after the long season of 
busy and perilous days, gladly retired to the freedom and quiet 
of private life. She remained in the service about three years, 
and the entire time, with only the briefest intervals of rest, was 
well and profitably occupied in her duties, a strong will and an 
excellent constitution having enabled her to endure fatigues which 
would soon have broken down a person less fitted, in these 
respects, for the work. 

Mrs. Spencer has received from soldiers, (who are all her grate- 
ful friends) from loyal people in various parts of the country, 
and from personal friends and neighbors, many tokens of appre- 
ciation, which she enumerates with just pride and gratitude. 
Not the least of these is her house and its furniture, a horse, a 
sewing machine, silver ware, and expensive books ; beside smaller 
articles whose chief value arises from the feeling that caused the 
gifts. Her health has suffered in consequence of her labors, but 
she now hopes for permanent recovery. 



MRS. HARRIET FOOTE HAWLEY 




MONG the many heroic women who gave their services 

to tlieir country in our recent warfare, few deserve more 

o^rateful mention than Mrs. Harriet Foote Hawlev, 

wife of Brevet Major-General Hawley, the present 

Governor of Connecticut. 

Mrs. Hawley is of a fragile and delicate constitution, and one 
always regarded by her friends as peculiarly unfitted to have part 
in labors or hardships of any kind. But from the beginning to 
the end of the war, she was an exemplification of how much may 
be done by one " strong of spirit/^ even with the most delicate 
physical frame. 

She went alone to Beaufort, South Carolina, in November, 
1862, to engage in teaching the colored people. While there she 
regularly visited the army hospitals, and interested herself in the 
practical details of nursing, to w4iich she afterwards more partic- 
ularly devoted herself, and that spring and summer did the same 
at Fernandina and St. Augustine. 

In November, 1863, she rejoined her husband on St. Helena 
Island, to which he had returned with his regiment from the 
siege of Charleston. She visited the Beaufort and Hilton Head 
General Hospitals, as well as the post hospital at St. Helena fre- 
quently during the winter, especially after the severe battle of 
Olustee, in February, 1864. When the Tenth Corps went to 
Fortress Monroe, to join General Butler's army, Mrs. Hawley 
went with them, and failhig to find work in the Chesapeake Hos- 

416 



MES. HARRIET FOOTE HAWLEY. 417 

pital, went to Washington and was assigned the charge of a ward 
in the Armory Square Hospital, on the very morning when the 
wounded began to arrive from the battles of the Wilderness. 

Her ward was one of the two in the armory itself, which for a 
considerable time contained more patients than any other in that 
hospital. ^^ Armory Square" being near the Potomac, usually 
received the most desperate cases, which could with difficulty be 
moved far. There could be no operating room connected with this 
ward, and the operations, however painful or dreadful, were of 
necessity performed in the ward itself. The scenes presented 
were enough to appal the stoutest nerves. The men exhausted 
by marching and by a long journey after their wounds, died with 
great rapidity — in one day forty-eight were carried out dead — 
many reaching the hospital only in time to die. 

Among scenes like these Mrs. Hawley took up her abode, and 
labored with an untiring zeal over four months in the hottest of 
the summer weather — never herself strong — often suffering to a 
degree that would have confined others to the bed of an invalid. 
She was ever at her post, a guiding, directing, and comforting 
presence, until worn-out nature required a temporary rest. After 
two months of repose she again returned to the same ward, and 
continued her labors from November to the last of March, 1865. 

About the first of March, directly after its capture, her husband 
had been assigned to the command of Wilmington, North Caro- 
lina. 

She arrived at Wilmington, directly after nine thousand Union 
prisoners had been delivered there, of whom more than three 
thousand needed hospital treatment. 

The army was entirely unprovided with any means of meeting 
this exigency. The horrible condition of the prisoners, and the 
crowds of half-fed whites and blacks collected in the town, bred a 
pestilence. Typhus or jail fever appeared in its most dreadful 
form, and the deaths were terribly frequent. The medical officers 
tried all their energies to get supplies. 

53 



418 woman's work in the civil war. 

The garrison, the loyal citizens^ and all good people gave their 
spare clothing, and all delicacies of food within reach, to alleviate 
the suffering. At one time nearly four thousand sick soldiers, 
together with some wounded from the main army, were scattered 
through the dwellings and churches of the town, and a consider- 
able time elapsed before one clean garment could be found for 
each sufferer. The principal surgeon. Dr. Buzzell, of New 
Hampshire, died of over exertion and typhoid fever. Of five 
northern ladies, professional nurses, three were taken sick and 
two died. Chaplain Eaton died of the fever, and other chaplains 
were severely sick. To the detailed soldiers the fever and climate 
proved a greater danger than a battle-field. Through all these 
scenes of trial and danger Mrs. Hawley exerted herself to the 
utmost, in the hospitals, and among the poor of the town, avoid- 
ing no danger of contagion, not even that of small-pox. 

Gradually supplies arrived, better hospitals were provided, the 
town was cleansed, and by the latter part of June — ^though the 
city was still unhealthy — but few cases remained in the hos- 
pitals. 

Mrs. Hawley accompanied her husband to Richmond about the 
1st of July, where he had been appointed chief of staff to Gen- 
eral Terry. In October, while returning from the battle-ground 
of Five Forks, where she had been with an uncle to find the 
grave of his son (Captain Parmerlee, First Connecticut Cavalry) 
she received an injury on the head by the upsetting of the ambu- 
lance, through which unfortunately she remains still an invalid. 

Her name and memory must be dear to hundreds whose suffer- 
ings she has shared and relieved, and she will be followed in her 
retirement by the prayers of grateful hearts. 

Although it does not perhaps belong to the purpose of this 
book, it seems not inappropriate to make mention of the labors 
of Mrs. Hawley in the education of the freedmen and their fam- 
ilies. Both she and her sister. Miss Kate Foote, labored in this 
sphere long and assiduously. 



MTIS. HARRIET FOOTE HAWLEY. 419 

Governor Hawley was one of the speakers at the Boston anni- 
versaries, in May, 1866. Colonel Higginson, in alluding to his 
personal services, said he would tell of his better half. When Col- 
onel Hawley went as commander of the Seventh Connecticut to 
Port Royal, to do his share of conquering and to conquer, he took 
with him a thousand bayonets on one side, and a Connecticut woman 
with her school-books on the other (applause). Where he planted 
the standard of the Union, she planted its institutions; and where 
he waved the sword, she waved the primer. 



ELLEN E. MITCHELL. 




HIS lady, better known among those to whom she 
ministered as ^'Nellie Mitchell/' was at the opening 
of the late war a resident of Montrose, Pennsylvania, 
where, surrounded bj friends, the inmate of a pleasant 
home, amiable, highly educated and accomplished, her early 
youth had been spent. Her family was one of that standing 
often named as " our first families,'^ and her position one every 
way desirable. 

Perhaps her own words extracted from a letter to the writer 
of this sketch will give the best statement of her views and 
motives. 

" I only did my duty, did what I could, and did it because it 
would have been a great act of self-denial not to have done it. 

^'I have ever felt that those who cheerfully gave their loved 
ones to their country's cause, made greater sacrifices, manifested 
more heroism, were worthy of more honor by far, than those of 
us who labored in the hospitals or on the fields. I had not 
these ^dear ones' to give, so gave heartily what I could, myself 
to the cause, with sincere gratitude, I trust, to God, for the privi- 
lege of thus doing." 

Miss Mitchell left her home in Montrose early in May, 1861, 
and proceeded to New York city, where she went through a 
course of instruction in surgical nursing at Bellevue Hospital, 
preparatory to assuming the duties of an army nurse. The un- 

420 



ELLEN E. MITCHELL. 421 

wonted labors, the terrible sights, and close attendance so impaired 
her health that after six weeks she concluded to go to Woodbury, 
Connecticut, where she remained with friends while awaiting 
orders, and in consequence did not join the army as soon as she 
otherwise would. Being absent from New York, one or two 
opportunities were lost, and it was not until September that her 
labors in the military hospitals commenced. 

She had intended to give her services to her country, but after 
witnessing the frequent destitution of comforts among those to 
whom she ministered, she decided to receive the regular pay of a 
nurse from the Government, and appropriated it entirely to the 
benefit of the suffering ones around her. 

Luxuries sent by her friends for her own use she applied in the 
sanoie manner. The four years of her service were filled with 
self-sacrifice and faithful devoted labor. 

Miss Mitchell spent the first three months in Elmore Hotel 
Hospital, Georgetown, District of Columbia. Around this place 
cluster some of the pleasantest, as well as the saddest memories 
of her life. The want of a well-arranged, systematic plan of 
action in this hospital, made the tasks of the nurses peculiarly 
arduous and trying. Yet Miss Mitchell records that she never 
found more delight in her labors, and never received warmer 
expressions of gratitude from her "boys.'' On being brought for 
the first time to a place associated in their minds only with gloom 
and suffering the joyful surprise of these poor fellows at finding 
kind hearts and willing hands ready to minister to their wants 
with almost motherly, or sisterly affection, exceeded words and 
called forth such manifestations of gratitude as amply rewarded 
those who thus watched over them for all their toils. Often as they 
saw these kindly women engaged in their busy tasks of mercy, 
their eyes would glisten as they followed them with the most 
intense earnestness, and their lips would unconsciously utter 
remarks like these, so homely and spontaneous as to leave no 
doubt of their sincerity. "How good! how home-like to see 



422 woman's work in the civil war. 

women moving around! We did not expect anything like 
this!" 

But much as she loved her work and had become attached to 
her charges, circumstances of a very painful nature soon com- 
pelled Miss Mitchell to resign her post in this hospital. Very 
unworthy hands sometimes assume a ministry of kindness. There 
were associations here so utterly repugnant to Miss Mitchell, that 
with a sorrowful heart she at last forced herself to turn her back 
upon the suffering, in order to be free from them. 

But Providence soon opened the way to another engagement. 
En less than two weeks she entered St. Elizabeth's Hospital. 
This was situated in Washington across the Eastern branch of the 
Potomac in an unfinished wing of the Insane Retreat. 

Her initiation here was a sad, lonely night-watch, by the bed- 
side of a dying nurse, who about ten o'clock the following day, 
with none but strangers to witness her dying conflicts, passed 
from this scene of pain and struggle. 

It was about the last of December that she entered here, and 
in February she was compelled to relinquish the care of her ward 
by a severe and dangerous illness which lasted seven weeks. 
Her greatest joy in returning health consisted in her restoration 
to the duties in which she had learned to delight. 

During this illness Miss Mitchell was constantly attended and 
nursed by Miss Jessie Home, a young woman of Scottish birth, 
of whom mention is made in another place, a most excellent and 
self-sacrificing woman who afterwards lost her life in the cause 
of her adopted country. 

This kindly care and the assiduous and skilful attentions of 
Dr. Stevens, who was the surgeon of the hospital were, as she 
gratefully believes, the means of preserving her life. 

Miss Mitchell had scarcely recovered from this illness when 
she was unexpectedly summoned home to stand by the death-bed 
of a beloved mother. After a month's absence, sadly occupied in 
this watch of affection, she again returned to Washington, whence 



ELLEJS^ E. MITCHELL. 423 

she was sent directly to Point Lookout, in Maryland, at the 
entrance of the Potomac into Chesapeake Bay, where a hospital 
had recently been established. 

She remained about two months at Point Lookout, and was 
surrounded there with great suffering in all its phases, besides 
meeting with peculiar trials, which rendered her stay at this hos- 
pital the most unsatisfactory part of her ^^ soldier life.'' 

Her next station was at the Ware House Hospital, Georgetown, 
District of Columbia, where she was employed in the care of the 
wounded from the second battle of Bull Pun. Most of these 
poor men were suffering from broken limbs, had lain several days 
uncared for upon the field, and were consequently greatly reduced 
in strength. They had besides suffered so much from their 
removal in the jolting ambulances, that many of them expressed 
a wish that they had been left to die on the field, rather than to 
have endured such torment. Miss Mitchell found here a sphere 
decidedly fitted to her peculiar powers, for she was always best 
pleased to labor in the surgical wards, and would dress and care 
for wounds with almost the skill, and more than the tenderness 
of a practiced surgeon. 

After some time this hospital being very open, became unten- 
antable, and in February was closed, and Miss Mitchell was trans- 
ferred to Union Hotel Hospital, where five of the nurses being at 
that time laid up by ilhiess, her duties became unusually arduous. 

Since her former labors here the hospital had been closed, 
refitted, and reopened under every way improved auspices. The 
" boys'' found themselves in every respect so kindly cared for, and 
so surrounded by home-like experience that it was with great 
regret they saw the hospital broken up, in March. 

Miss Mitchell's inclination would then, as often before, have 
led her to the front, but she was forced to obey orders, "soldier- 
like," and found herself transferred to Knight Hospital, New 
Haven, as the next scene of her labors. Here she remained three 
months actively and usefully employed, but at the end of that 



424 

time she had become so worn out with her long continued and 
arduous services, as to feel compelled to resign her position as 
army nurse. She soon after accepted a desirable situation in the 
Treasury Department, upon the duties of which she entered in 
July, 1863. 

Miss Mitchell has never quite reconciled her conscience to this 
act, which she fears was too much tinged with selfishness and 
induced by interested motives. Feeling thus, she again enlisted 
as army nurse after a few months, resolving never again to aban- 
don the service, while the war continued and strength was given 
her to labor. 

This was in the beginning of May, 1864, and she was imme- 
diately sent to Fredericksburg to assist in caring for the wounded 
from the battle of the Wilderness. The scenes and labors of that 
terrible period are beyond description. Miss Mitchell was amidst 
them all, and like an angel of mercy made herself everywhere 
useful to the crowds of ghastly sufferers from those fields of awful 
carnage, which marked the onward march of Grant to victory, 
and the suppression of the rebellion. 

When our army left Fredericksburg, most of the wounded 
were transferred to Washington, Miss Mitchell would again have 
preferred to go to the front, but obeyed orders, and went instead 
to Judiciary Square Hospital, Washington, where she found many 
of her former patients. After she had spent one day there, she 
would not willingly have left those poor men whom she found so 
greatly needing a woman's care. For weeks the mortality was 
fearful, and she found herself surrounded by the dead and dying, 
but gradually this was lessened, and she became engaged in the 
more delightful duty of superintending the improvement of con- 
valescents, and watching the return to health of many a brave 
hero who had perhaps sacrificed limbs, and well-nigh life, in the 
service of his country. Here she remained, with ever-increasing 
satisfaction in her labors, until the final closing of the Hospital 
in June, 1865. 



ELLEN E. MITCHELL. 425 

Here also ended her army services, witli the occasion for them. 
She had rendered them joyfully;, and she resigned them with 
regret and sadness at parting with those who had so long been 
her charge, and whom she would probably see no more forever. 
But in all joy or sadness, in all her life, she will not cease to 
remember with delight and gratitude how she was enabled to 
minister to the suffering, and thus perform a woman's part in the 
great struggle which redeemed our country from slavery, and 
made us truly a free people. 

Few have done better service, for few have been so peculiarly 
adapted to their work. In all she gratefully acknowledges the 
aid and sustaining sympathy of her friends in New Milford, Pa., 
and elsewhere, to which she was so greatly indebted for the ability 
to minister with comforts to the sufferers under her charge. 

As these lines are written some letters from a soldier who was 
long under her kind care in Washington, lie upon the writer's table 
with their appreciative mention of this excellent woman; which 
coming from one who knew and experienced her goodness, may 
well be regarded as the highest testimony of it. Here is one brief 
extract therefrom. 

"As for Miss Mitchell herself — she has a cheerful courage, 
faith and patience which take hold of the duties of this place 
with a will that grasps the few amenities and pleasures found 
here, and works them all up into sunshine; and looks over and 
beyond the fatiguing work, and unavoidable brutalities of the 
present. Do we not call this happiness? Happiness is not to be 
pitied — nor is she!'' 

In another place he speaks of her unswerving, calm devo- 
tion — her entire self-abnegation, as beyond all he has seen of the 
like traits elsewhere. And still there were many devoted women 
— perhaps many Ellen Mitchells! Again he compares the 
hospital work of Miss Mitchell and her fellow-laborers with that 
of the sisters of charity, in whose care he had previously been — 
the one human, alert, sympathizing — not loving sin, nor sinful 

54 



426 

men, but laboring for them, sacrificing for them, pardoning them 
as Christ does — the other working with machine-like accuracy, 
but with as little apparent emotion, showing none in fact beyond 
a prudish shrinking from these sufferers from the outer world, 
of which they know nothing but have only heard of its wicked- 
ness. The contrast is powerful, and shows Miss Mitchell and her 
friends in fairest colors. 



MISS JESSIE HOME 




ESSIE HOME was a native of Scotland. No ties 
bound her to this^ her adopted land. No relative of 
hers, resided upon its soil. She was alone — far from 
kindred and the friends of her early youth. But the 
country of her adoption had become dear to her. She loved it 
with the ardor and earnestness which were a part of her nature, 
and she was willing, nay anxious, to devote herself to its service. 

At the commencement of the war Miss Home was engaged in 
a pleasant and lucrative pursuit, which she abandoned that she 
might devote herself to the arduous and ill-paid duties of a hos- 
pital nurse. 

She entered the service early in the war, and became one of the 
corps of Government nurses attached to the hospitals in the 
vicinity of Washington. Like others, regularly enlisted, and 
under orders from Miss Dix, the Government Superintendent of 
nurses, she was transferred from point to point and from hospital 
to hospital, as the exigencies of the service required. But she 
had only to be known to be appreciated, and her companions, her 
patients, and the surgeons under whom she worked, were equally 
attached to her, and loud in her praises. She entered into her 
work with her whole soul — untiring, faithful, of a buoyant tem- 
perament, she possessed a peculiar power of winning the love and 
confidence of all with whom she came in contact. 

She was quite dependent upon her own resources, and in giving 
herself to the cause yielded up a profitable employment and with 
it her means of livelihood. Yet she denied herself all luxuries, 

427 



428 

everything but the merest necessities, that out of the pittance of 
pay received from the Government, out of the forty cents per day 
with which her labors were 7'ewarded, she might save something 
for the wants of the suffering ones under her care. 

And be it remembered always, that in this work it was not 
alone the well-born and the wealthy who made sacrifices, and 
gave grand gifts. Not from the sacrifice of gauds and frippery 
did the humble charities of these hired nurses come, but from the 
yielding up of a thousand needed comforts for themselves, and 
the forgetfulness of their own wants, in supplying the mightier 
wants of the suffering. It is impossible to mention them with 
words of praise beyond their merit. 

For about two years Miss Home labored thus untiringly and 
faithfully, always alert, cheerful, active. During this time she 
had drawn to herself hosts of attached friends. 

At the end of that period she fell a martyr to her exertions in 
the cause to which she had so nobly devoted herself. 

When attacked with illness, she must have felt all the horrors 
of desolation — for she was without means or home. But Provi- 
dence did not desert her in this last dread hour of trial. Miss 
E-ebecca Bergen of Brooklyn, N. Y., who had learned her w^orth 
by a few months' hospital association, deemed it a privilege to re- 
ceive the sufferer at her own home, and to watch over the last hours 
of this noble life as it drew to a close, ministering to her suffer- 
ings with all the kindness and affection of a sister, and smoothing 
her passage to the grave. 

Thus, those, who without thought for themselves, devote their 
lives and energies to the welfare of others, are often unexpect- 
edly cared for in the hour of their own extremity, and find friends 
springing up to protect them, and to supply their wants in the 
day of their need. Far from kindred and her native land, this 
devoted woman thus found friends and kindly care, and the 
stranger hands that laid her in an alien grave were warm with the 
emotion of loving hearts. 



M. VANCE AND M. A. BLACKMAR. 




ISS MARY VANCE is a Pennsylvanian, Before the 
War, she was teaching among the Indians of Kansas 
or Nebraska, but it becoming unsafe there, she was 
forced to leave. She came to Miss Dix, who sent her to 
a Baltimore Hospital, in which she rendered efficient service, as 
she afterward did in Washington and Alexandria. In Septem- 
ber, 1863, she went to the General Hospital, Gettysburg, where 
she was placed in charge of six wards, and no more indefatigable, 
faithful and judicious nurse was to be found on those grounds. 
She labored on continuously, going from point to point, as our 
army progressed towards Richmond, at Fredericksburg, suffering 
much from want of strengthening and proper food, but never 
murmuring, doing a vast amount of work, in such a quiet and 
unpretending manner, as to attract the attention from the look- 
ers-on. Few, but the recipients of her kindness, knew her worth. 
At City Point, she was stationed in the Second Corps Hospital, 
where she, as usual, won the respect and esteem of the Surgeons 
and all connected with her. 

Miss Vance labored the whole term of the War, with but three 
weeks' furlough, in all that time. A record, that no other woman 
can give, and but few soldiers. 

Miss Blackmar, one of Michigan's worthy daughters, w^as one 
of the youngest of the band of Hospital nurses. She, for ten 
months, labored unceasingly at City Point. More than usually 
skilful in wound dressing, she rendered efficient service to her 

429 



430 

Surgeons, as well as in saving many poor boys much suffering 
from the rough handling of inexperienced soldier-nurses. A lad 
was brought to her Wards, wdth a wound in the temple, which, 
in the course of time, ate into the artery. This she had feared, 
and was always especially careful in watching and attending to 
him. But, in her absence, a hemorrhage took place, the nurse 
endeavored to staunch the blood, but at last, becoming frightened, 
sent for a Surgeon. When she came back to the Ward, there 
lay her boy pale and exhausted, life almost gone. But she per- 
severed in her efforts, and at last had the satisfaction of witness- 
ing his recovery. 

At City Point, Miss Vance and Miss Blackmar were tent-mates, 
and intimate friends — both noted for their untiring devotion to 
their work, their prudent and Christian deportment. As an in- 
stance of the wearying effects of the labors of a Hospital nurse, 
Mrs. Husband, who was the firm friend, and at City Point, 
the associate of these two young ladies, relates the following; 
these two ladies, wearied as usual, retired one very cold night. 
Miss Blackmar taking a hot brick with her, for her feet. They 
slept the sound sleep of exhaustion for some time, when Miss 
Vance struggled into consciousness, with a sensation of smother- 
ing, and found that the tent was filled with smoke. After re- 
peatedly calling her companion, she was forced to rise and shake 
her, telling her that she must be on fire. This at last aroused 
Miss Blackmar, who found that the brick had burned through the 
cloth in which it was wrapped, the straw-bed and two army blan- 
kets. By the application of water, the fire was quenched, and 
after airing the tent, they were soon sleeping as soundly as ever. 
But, in the morning, Miss Blackmar, to her consternation, found 
that her feet and ankles were badly burned, covered with blisters 
and very painful, though her sleep had been too sound to feel it 
before. 




En^'tyA.a-lFa-tci*-^- 



Miss, Hat tie A.Dada. 



H. A, DADA AND S. E, HALL 




ISS HATTIE A. DADA, and Miss Susan E. Hall, 
were among the most earnest and persistent workers in 
a field which presented so many opportunities for labor 
and sacrifice. Both offered themselves to the Women's 
Central Association of Relief, New York, immediately on the 
formation of that useful organization for any service, or in any 
capacity, where their aid could be made available. Both had 
formerly been employed by one of the Missionary Societies, in 
mission labors among the Indians of the Southwest, and were 
eminently fitted for any sphere of usefulness which the existing 
condition of our country could present to woman. 

They were received by the Association, and requested to join 
the class of women who, with similar motives and intentions, 
were attending the series of lectures and surgical instructions 
which was to prepare them for the duties of nurses in the army 
hospitals. 

On Sunday, July 21st, 1861, a memorable day, the first battle 
of Bull Run took place. On the following day, the 22d, the 
disastrous tidings of defeat and rout was received in New York, 
and the country was thrilled with pain and horror. 

At noon, on Monday, the 22d, Miss Dada and Miss Hall 
received instructions to prepare for their journey to the scene of 
their future labors, and at six P. M. they took the train for 
"Washington, with orders to report to Miss Dix. Tuesday morn- 
ing found them amidst all the terrible excitement which reigned 

431 



432 

in that city. The only question Miss Dix asked, was, ^^ Are you 
ready to work?" and added, "You are needed in Alexandria." 

And toward Alexandria they were shortly proceeding. There 
Avere apprehensions that the enemy might pursue our retreating 
troops, of whom they met many as they crossed the Long Bridge, 
and passed the fortifications all filled with soldiers watching for 
the coming foe who might then so easily have invaded the Fede- 
ral City. 

In some cabins by the road-side they first saw some wounded 
men, to whom they paused to administer words of cheer, and a 
" cup of cold water." They were in great apprehension that the 
road might not be safe, and a trip to Richmond, in the capacity 
of prisoners was by no means to be desired. 

At last they reached Alexandria, and in a dark stone building 
on Washington Street, formerly a seminary, found their hospital. 
They were denied admittance by the sentinel, but the surgeon in 
charge was called, and welcomed them to their new duties. 

There they lay, the wounded, some on beds, many on mattresses 
spread upon the floor, covered with the blood from their wounds, 
and the dust of that burning summer battle-field, many of them 
still in their uniforms. The retreat was so unexpected, the 
wounded so numerous, and the helpers so few, that all were at 
once extremely busy in bringing order and comfort to that scene 
of suffering. 

Their labors here were exceedingly arduous. No soldiers were 
detailed as attendants for the first few weeks, and even the most 
menial duties fell upon these ladies. Sometimes a contraband 
was assigned them as assistant, but he soon tired of steady em- 
ployment and left. They had little sleep and food that was 
neither tempting nor sufficient. So busy were they that two 
weeks elapsed before Miss Dada, whose letters furnish most of 
the material for this sketch, found time to write home, and inform 
her anxious friends "where she was." 

A busy month passed thus, and then the numbers in the hos- 



MISS HATTIE A. DADA AND SUSAN E. HALL. 433 

pital began to decrease, many of the convalescent being sent North, 
or having furloughs^ till only the worst cases remained. 

As the winter approached typhus fever began to prevail among 
the troops, and many distressing cases, some of w^hich despite all 
their efforts proved mortal, came under the care of these ladies. 

About the beginning of April, 1862, soon after the battle of 
Winchester, and the defeat of Stonewall Jackson by General 
Shields, Miss Dada and Miss Hall were ordered thither to care 
for the wounded. Here they were ti'ansferred from one hospital 
to another, without time to become more than vaguely interested 
in the individual welfare of their patients. At length at the 
third, the Court-House Hospital, they were permitted to remain 
for several weeks. Here many interesting cases were found, and 
they became much attached to some of the sufferers under their 
care, and found great pleasure in their duties. 

On the 22d of May they were ordered to Strasburg, and pro- 
ceeded thither to the care of several hundred sick, entirely unsus- 
picious of personal danger, not dreaming that it could be met 
with beside the headquarters of General Banks. But on the fol- 
lowing day trooj^s were observed leaving the town on the Front 
Royal road, and the same night the memorable retreat was 
ordered. 

It was indeed a sad sight which met their eyes in the gray of 
early dawn. Ambulances and army Avagons filled the streets. 
Soldiers from the hospitals, scarcely able to walk, crawled slowly 
and painfully along, while the sick were crowded into the over- 
filled ambulances. 

Pressing forward they arrived at Winchester at noon, but the 
ambulances did not arrive till many hours later, with their dis- 
mal freight. The fright and suffering had overpowered many, 
and many died as they Avere carried into the hospitals. A little 
later the wounded began to come in, and the faithful, hard-Avorked 
surgeons and nurses had their hands full. The retreating Union 
forces came pouring through the town, the rebels in close pursuit. 

65 



434 woman's work in the civil wae. 

The shouts of the combatants, and the continued firing, created 
great confusion. Fear was in every heart, pallor on every cheek, 
anxiety in every eye, for they knew not what would be their fate, 
but had heard that the wounded had been bayonetted at Front 
Royal the previous day. Many dying men, in their fright and 
delirium, leaped from their beds, and when laid down soon ceased 
to breathe. 

Soon the rebels had possession of the town, and the ladies found 
themselves prisoners with a rebel guard placed about their hos- 
pital. 

Their supplies were now quite reduced, and it was not until 
personal application had been made by the nurses to the rebel 
authorities, that suitable food was furnished. 

When the army left Winchester, enough men were ordered to 
remain to guard the hospitals, and an order was read to all the 
inmates, that any of them seen in the streets would be shot. 

Miss Dada and her friend remained at this place until the 
months of June and July were passed. In August they were 
assigned to Armory Square Hospital, Washington. 

Previous to the second battle of Bull Run, all the convalescent 
men were sent further North, and empty beds were in readiness 
for the wounded, who on the evening after the battle were brought 
in, in great numbers, covered with the dust and gore of the field 
of conflict. Here the ministering care of these ladies was most 
needed. They hastened with basins and sponges, cold water and 
clean clothes, and soon the sufferers felt the benefits of cleanliness, 
and were laid, as comfortably as their wounds would admit, in 
those long rows of white beds that awaited them. All were cheer- 
ful, and few regretted the sacrifices they had made. But in a 
few days many of these heroes succumbed before the mighty 
Conqueror. Their earthly homes they were never to see, but, 
one by one, they passed silently to their last home of silence and 
peace, where the war of battle and the pain of w^ounds never dis- 
turb. One poor fellow, a Michigan soldier, wounded in the 



MISS HATTIE A. DADA AND SUSAIS" E. HALL. 435 

throat, could take no nourishment, nor scarcely breathe. His 
sufferings were intense, and his restlessness kept him constantly 
in motion as long as the strength for a movement remained. But 
at last, he silently turned his face to the wall, and so died. An- 
other, a victim of lockjaw, only yielded to the influence of chlo- 
roform. Another, whom the surgeons could only reach the 
second day, had his arm amputated, but too late. Even while 
he believed himself on the road to recovery, bad symptoms had 
intervened; and while with grateful voice he was planning how 
he would assist Miss Dada as soon as he was well enough, in the 
care of other patients, the hand of death was laid upon him, and 
he soon passed away. 

Such are a few of the heart-rending scenes and incidents through 
which these devoted ladies passed. 

The month of November found Miss Dada at Harper's Ferry. 
Miss Hall had been at Antietam, but the friends had decided to 
be no longer separated. 

They found that the Medical Director of the Twelfth Army 
Corps Avas just opening a hospital there, and the next day the 
sick and wounded from the regimental hospitals were brought in. 
They had suffered for lack of care, but though the new hospital 
was very scantily furnished, they found that cause of trouble 
removed. Many of them had long been ill, and want of clean- 
liness and vermin had helped to reduce them to extreme emacia- 
tion. Their filthy clothes were replaced by clean ones, and 
burned or thrown into the river, their heads shaven, and their 
revolting appearance removed. But many a youth whom sick- 
ness and suffering had given the appearance of old age, suc- 
cumbed to disease and suffering, and joined the long procession 
to the tomb. 

These were sad days, the men were dying rapidly. One day a 
middle-aged woman came in inquiring for her son. Miss Dada 
took from her pocket a slip of paper containing the name of one 
who had died a day or two previously — it Avas the name of the 



436 

son of this mother. She sought the surgeon, and together they 
undertook the painful task of conveying to the mother the tidings 
that her visit was in vain. Poor mother ! How many, like her, 
returned desolate to broken homes, from such a quest ! 

May and June, 1863, Miss Dada and Miss Hall spent at 
Acquia Creek, in care of the wounded from the battle of Chan- 
cellorsville, and the 8th of July found them at Gettysburg — Miss 
Dada at the hospital of the Twelfth Army Corps, at a little dis- 
tance from the town, and Miss Hall at that of the First Army 
Corps, which was within the town. The hospital of the Twelfth 
Army Corps was at a farm-house. The house and barns were 
filled with wounded, and tents were all around, crowded with 
sufferers, among whom were many wounded rebel prisoners, wbo 
were almost overwhelmed with astonishment and gratitude to find 
that northern ladies v/ould extend to them the same care as to the 
soldiers of their own army. 

The story of Gettysburg, and the tragical days that followed, 
has been too often told to need repetition. The history of the 
devotion of Northern women to their country's defenders, and of 
their sacrifices and labors was illustrated in brightest characters 
there. Miss Hall and Miss Dada remained there as long as their 
services could be made available. 

In December, 1863, they were ordered to Murfreesboro', Ten- 
nessee, once a flourishing town, but showing everywhere the 
devastations of war. Two Seminaries, and a College, large blocks 
of stores, and a hotel, had been taken for hospitals, and were now 
filled with sick and wounded men. A year had passed since the 
awful battle of Stone River, — the field of which, now a wide 
waste lay near the town — but the hospitals had never been 
empty. 

When they arrived, they reported to the medical director, who 
^* did not care whether they stayed or not,'' but, ^' if they re- 
mained wished them to attend exclusively to the preparation of 
the Special Diet." They received only discouraging words from 



MISS HATTIE A. DADA AND SUSAN E. HALL. 437 

all they met. They found shelter for the night at the house of a 
rebel woman, and were next day assigned — Miss Hall to No. 1 
Hospital, Miss Dada to No. 3. 

When they reported, the surgeon of No. 1 Hospital, for their 
encouragement, informed them that the chaplain thought they 
had better not remain. Miss Dada also was coldly received, and 
it was evident that the Surgeons and chaplains were very comfor- 
table, and desired no outside interference. They believed, how- 
ever, that there was a work for them to do, and decided to re- 
main. 

Miss Dada found in the wards more than one familiar face 
from the Twelfth Army Corps, and the glad enthusiasm of her 
welcome by the patients, contrasted with the chilling reception 
of the officers. 

Most of these men had been wounded at Lookout Mountain, a 
few days before, but many others had been suffering ever since 
the bloody battle of Chickamauga. 

Miss Hall was able to commence her work at once, but Miss 
Dada was often exhorted to patience, while waiting three long 
weeks for a stove, before she could do more than, by the favor 
of the head cook of the full diet kitchen, occasionally prepare at 
his stove, some small dishes for the worst cases. 

Here the winter wore away. Many a sad tale of the desola- 
tions of war was poured into their ears, by the suffering Union 
women who had lost their husbands, fathers, sons, in the wild 
warfare of the country in which they lived. And many a scene 
of sorrow and suffering they witnessed. 

In January, they had a pleasant call from Dr. M , one 

of the friends they had known at Gettysburg. This gentleman, 
in conversation with the medical director, told him he knew two 
of the ladies there. The reply illustrates the peculiar position 
in which they w^ere placed. ^^ Ladies!" he answered with a sneer, 
" We have no ladies here ! A hospital is no place for a lady. 
We have some women here, who are cooks !'^ 



438 

But they remembered that one has said — "The lowest post of 
service is the highest place of honor/^ and that Christ had humil- 
iated himself to wash the feet of his disciples. 

In the latter part of the ensuing May, they went to Chatta- 
nooga. They were' most kindly received by the surgeons, and 
found much to be done. Car-loads of wounded were daily com- 
ing from the front, all who could bear removal were sent further 
north, and only the w^orst cases retained at Chattanooga. They 
were all in good spirits, however, and rejoicing at Sherman's suc- 
cessful advance — even those upon Avhom death had set his dark 
seal. 

Miss Dada often rejoiced, while here, in the kindness of her 
friends at home, which enabled her to procure for the sick those 
small, but at that place, costly luxuries which their condition 
demanded. 

As the season advanced to glowing summer, the mortality 
became dreadful. In her hospital alone, not a large one, and con- 
taining but seven hundred beds, there were two hundred and 
sixty-one deaths in the month of June, and there were from five 
to twenty daily. These were costly sacrifices, often of the best, 
noblest, most promising, — for Miss Dada records — "Daily I see 
devoted Christian youths dying on the altar of our country." 

With the beginning of November came busy times, as the cars 
daily came laden with their freight of suffering from Atlanta. 
On the 26th, Miss Dada records, " One year to-day since Hooker's 
men fought above the clouds on Lookout. To-day as I look 
upon the grand old mountain the sun shines brightly on the 
graves of those who fell there, and all is quiet." 

Again, after the gloomy winter had passed, she pyrites, in 
March, 1865, "Many cases of measles are being brought in, 
mostly new soldiers, many conscripts, and so down-spirited if they 
get sick. It was a strange expression a poor fellow made the 
other day, ^ You are the God-hlessedest woman I ever saw.' He 
only lived a few days after being brought to the hospital." 



MISS HATTIE A. DADA AND SUSAN E. HALL. 439 

Their work of mercy was now well-nigh over, as the necessity 
for it seemed nearly ended. Patients were in May being mustered 
out of the service, and the hospitals thinning. Miss Dada and 
Miss Hall thought they could be spared, and started eastward. 
But when in Illinois, word reached them that all the ladies but 
one had left, and help was needed, and Miss Dada returned to 
Chattanooga. Here she was soon busy, for, though the war was 
over, there were still many sick, and death often claimed a 
victim. 

Miss Dada remained till the middle of September, engaged in 
her duties, when, having given more than four years to the service 
of her country, she at last took her leave of hospital-life, and re- 
turned to home and its peaceful pleasures. 

Before leaving she visited the historical places of the vicinity 
— saw a storm rise over Mission Ridge, and heard the thunders 
of heaven^s artillery where once a hundred guns belched forth 
their fires and swept our brave boys to destruction. She climbed 
Lookout, amidst its vail of clouds, and visited "Picket Rock," 
where is the spring at which our troops obtained water the night 
after the battle, and the '^ Point" where, in the early morn, the 
Stars and Stripes proclaimed to the watching hosts below, that 
they were victors. 



MRS. SARAH P. EDSON 



. 


1 



RS. EDSON is a native of Fleming, Cayuga County, 
New York, where her earlier youth was passed. At 
ten years of age she removed with her parents to Ohio, 
but after a few years again returned to her native place. 
Her father died while she was yet young, and her childhood and 
youth were clouded by many sorrows. . 

Gifted with a warm imagination, and great sensitiveness of feel- 
ing, at an early age she learned to express her thoughts in written 
words. Her childhood was not a happy one, and she thus found 
relief for a thousand woes. At length some of her writings found 
their way into print. 

She spent several years as a teacher, and was married and re- 
moved to Pontiac, Michigan, in 1845. During her married life 
she resided in several States, but principally in Maysville, Ken- 
tucky. 

Here she became well known as a writer, but her productions, 
both in prose and poetry, were usually written under various 
nommes de plume, and met very general acceptance. 

She at various times edited journals devoted to temperance and 
general literature in the Western States, and became known as 
possessing a keenly observing and philosophic mind. This ex- 
perience, perhaps, prepared and eminently fitted her for the service 
into which she entered at the breaking out of the war, and ena- 
bled her to comprehend and provide for the necessities and emer- 
gencies of "the situation.^' 

440 



MKS. SARAH P. EDSON. 441 

Mrs. Edson arrived in Washington ISTovember 1st, 1861, and 
commenced service as nurse in Columbia College Hospital. She 
remained there serving with great acceptance until early in March 
when the army was about to move and a battle was in anticipa- 
tion, when by arrangement with the Division Surgeon, Dr. 
Palmer, she joined Sumner's Division, at Camp California, Vir- 
ginia, where she was to remain and follow to render her services 
in case the anticipation was verified. The enemy, however, had 
stolen away, and " Quaker '^ guns being the only armament en- 
countered, her services were not needed. 

She soon after received an appointment from Surgeon-General 
Finley to proceed to Winchester, Virginia, to assist in the care of 
the wounded from General Banks' army. She found the hos- 
pital there in a most deplorable condition. Gangrene was in all 
the wards, the filth and foulness of the atmosphere were fearful. 
Men were being swept ofP by scores, and all things were in such 
a state as must ever result from inexperience, and perhaps incom- 
petence, on the part of those in charge. Appliances and stores 
were scanty, and many of the surgeons and persons in charge, 
though doing the least that was possible, were totally unfit for 
their posts through want of experience and training. 

The Union Hotel Hospital was placed in charge of Mrs. Edson, 
and the nurses who accompanied her were assigned to duty there. 
It was to be thoroughly cleansed and rendered as wholesome as 
possible. 

The gratitude of the men for their changed condition, in a few 
days amply attested the value of the services of herself and asso- 
ciates, and demonstrated the fact that women have an important 
place in a war like ours. 

Mrs. Edson next proceeded to join the army before Yorktown, 
about the 1st of May, 1862, and was attached to the Hospital of 
General Sumner's corps. She arrived the day following the battle 
of Williamsl)urg, and learning that her son was among the 
wounded left in a hospital several miles from Yorktown, she at 

56 



442 

once started od foot to find him. After a walk of twelve miles 
she discovered him apparently in a dying state, he and his com- 
rades imperatively demanding care. Here she spent four sleep- 
less days and nights of terrible anxiety, literally flying from hut 
to hut of the rebel-built hospitals, to care for other sick and 
WDunded men, whenever she could leave her son. 

She remained thus till imperative orders were received to break 
up this hospital and go to York town. The men were laid in 
army wagons and transported over the rough roads from nine in 
the morning till six in the evening. Arriving exhausted by their 
terrible sufferings, they found no provision made for their recep- 
tion. That was a dreadful day, and to an inexperienced eye and 
a sympathetic heart the suffering seemed frightful ! 

The 21st of May, Mrs. Edson went to Fortress Monroe, to care 
for her son and others, remaining a week. From thence she pro- 
ceeded to White House and the "front." Arriving here the 
enemy were expected, and it was forbidden to land. At daylight 
the " only woman on board' ^ was anxiously inquiring if there was 
any suffering to relieve. Learning that some wounded had just 
been brought in, she left the boat notwithstanding the prohibi- 
tion, and found over three hundred bleeding and starved heroes 
lying upon the ground. The Sanitary Commission boats had 
gone, and no supplies were left but coffee and a little rice. As 
she stepped ashore, a soldier with a shattered arm came up to her, 
almost timidly, and with white trembling lips asked her if she 
could give them something to eat — they had lost everything three 
days before, and had been without food since. What an appeal 
to the sympathy of a warm heart ! 

It was feared that no food could be obtained, but after great 
search a barrel of cans of beef was found. Some camp kettles 
were gathered up, and a fire kindled. In the shortest possible 
time beef soup and coffee were passing round among these 
delighted men. Their gratitude was beyond words. At 
four o'clock, that afternoon, the last man was put on board 



MES. SARAH P. EDSON. 443 

the ship which was to convey them within reach of supplies and 
care. 

Mrs. Edson was left alone. One steamer only of the quarter- 
master's department remained. The quartermaster had no author- 
ity to admit her on board. But in view of the momently expected 
arrival of the enemy he told her to go on board and remain, 
promising not to interfere with her until she reached Harrison's 
Landing. And this was all that could be gained by her who was 
so busily working for the soldier — this the alternative of being 
left to the tender mercy of the enemy. 

She remained at Harrison's Landing until the 12th of August, 
and passed through all the terrible and trying scenes that attended 
the arrival of the defeated, demoralized, and depressed troops of 
McClellan's army. These baffle description. Enough, that hands 
and heart were full — full of work, and full of sympathy, with so 
much frightful suffering all around her! She was here greatly 
aided and sustained by the presence and help of that excellent 
nan. Chaplain Arthur B. Fuller, who passed away to his reward 
long ere the close of the struggle, into which he had entered with 
so true an appreciation and devotion. Again, here as everywhere, 
gratitude for kindness, and cheerfulness in suffering marked the 
conduct of the poor men under her care. 

When the army left she repaired again to Fortress Monroe, 
and was on duty there at Hygeia Hospital during the transit of 
the army. 

She returned to Alexandria the 30th of August, and almost 
immediately heard rumors of the fighting going on at the front. 
She applied for permission to proceed to the field, but was in- 
formed that the army was retreating. The next tidings was of 
the second battle of Bull Eun, and the other disastrous conflicts 
of Pope's campaign. As she could not go to the front to give aid 
and comfort to that small but heroic army in its retreat she did 
w^hat she could for the relief of any sufferers who came under her 
notice, until the news of the conflict at Antietam was received, 



444 

with rumors of its dreadful slaughter. Her heart was fired with 
anxiety to proceed thither, but permission was again denied her, 
the surgeon-general replying that she was evidently worn out 
and must rest for a time. He was right, for on the ensuing day 
she was seized with a severe illness which prevented any furthtir 
exertion for many weeks. 

During the slow hours of convalescence from this illness she 
revolved a plan for systematizing the female branch of the relief 
service. Her idea was to provide a home for volunteer nurses, 
where they could be patiently educated and instructed in the 
necessities of the work they were to assume, and where they could 
retire for rest when needed, or in the brief intervals of their 
labors. 

Her first labor on recovery was to proceed to Warrenton with 
supplies, but she found the army moving and the sick already on 
board the cars. She did what was possible for them under the 
circumstances. The trains moved off and she was left to wait 
for one that was to convey her back to Alexandria. This, how- 
ever, was cut off by the rebels, and she found herself with no 
resource but to proceed with the army to Acquia Creek. She 
records that she reached Acquia, after several days, and a new 
and interesting experience, which was kindness and courtesy from 
all with whom she came in contact. 

Immediately after her return to Washington, Mrs. Edson 
attempted to systematize her plan for a home and training school 
for nurses. A society was formed, and Mrs. Caleb B. Smith at 
first (but soon after in consequence of her resignation) Mrs. B. F. 
Wade, was appointed President, and Mrs. Edson, Secretary. 

Many meetings were held. The attention of commanding and 
medical officers was drawn to the plan. Almost unanimously 
they expressed approval of it. 

Mrs. Edson was the soul of the work, hers was the guiding 
brain, the active hand, and as is usual in similar cases most of the 
labor fell upon her. She visited the army at Fredericksburg, 



MRS. SARAH P. EDSON. 445 

and carefully examined the hospitals to ascertain their needs 
in this respect. This with other journeys of the same kind occu- 
pied a considerable portion of the winter. 

State Belief Societies had been consulted and approved the 
plan. Mrs. Edson visited the Sanitary Commission and laid the 
plan before them, but while they admitted the necessity of a 
home and place of rest for nurses, which they soon after estab- 
lished, they regarded a training school for them unnecessary, 
believing that those who were adapted to their work would best 
acquire the needed skill in it in the hospital itself, and that their 
imperative need of attendants in the hospitals and in the depart- 
ments of special and field relief, did not admit of the delay 
required to educate nurses for the service. 

The surgeon-general, though at first favorably impressed with 
the idea, on more mature consideration discouraged it, and with- 
held his approval before the Senate Committee, who had a bill 
before them for the establishment of such an institution. Thus 
thwarted in the prosecution of the plan on which she had set her 
heart, Mrs. Edson did not give up in despair, nor did she suffer 
her sympathy and zeal in its prosecution to prevent her from 
engaging in what she rightly regarded as the paramount work of 
every loyal woman who could enter upon it, the care of the sick 
and wounded after the great battles. The fearfully disastrous 
battle of Fredericksburg in December, 1862, called her to the 
front, and she was for several weeks at Falmouth caring tenderly 
for the wounded heroes there. This good work accomplished she 
returned to Washington, and thence visited New York city, and 
made earnest endeavors to enlist the aid of the wealthy and 
patriotic in this movement. She was familiar with Masonic lite- 
rature and with the spirit of Masonry. Her husband had been 
an advanced member of the Order, and she had herself taken all 
the "Adoptive Degrees.^' These reasons induced her to seek the 
aid of the Order, and she was pleased to find that she met with 
much encouragement. The "Army Nurses' Association" was 



446 

formed in New York, and commenced work under the auspices 
of the Masons. In the spring of 1864, when Grant's campaign 
commenced with the terrible battles of the Wilderness, Mrs. 
Edson hastened to the ^' front.'' Almost immediately the sur- 
geons requested her to send for ten of the nurses then receiving 
instruction as part of her class at Clinton Hall, New York. 

She did so. They were received, transportation found, and 
rations and pay granted. And they were found to be valuable 
workers, Mrs. Edson receiving from the Surgeons in charge, the 
highest testimonials of their usefulness. She had at first men- 
tioned it to the Surgeons as an experiment, and said that funds 
and nurses would not be wanting if it proved a success. The 
day on which the order for the evacuation of Fredericksburg was 
issued, she was told that her ^^ experiment was more than a suc- 
cess — ^it was a triumph." And this by one of the highest offi- 
cials of the Medical department. 

Eighty more nurses were at once ordered. 

The interest taken by the Masons in this movement, led to the 
formation of the " Masonic Mission," with a strong " Advisory 
Board," composed of leading and wealthy Masons. 

Mrs. Edson, with unquestioning confidence in the integrity of 
Masons, and in the honor of the gentlemen who had given the 
movement the great strength of their names, continued ardently 
carrying out her plan. More nurses were sent out, and all re- 
ceived the promise of support by the ^^ INIission." Much good — 
how much none may say, was performed by these women. They 
suffered and labored, and sacrificed much. They gave their best 
efforts and cares. Many of them were poor women, unable to 
give their time and labor without remuneration. But, alas ! the 
purposes and promises of the Masonic Mission, were never 
fulfilled. Many of the women received no remuneration, and 
great suffering and dissatisfaction was the result. The good to 
the suffering of the army was perhaps the same. 

Amidst all her sorrows and disappointments, Mrs. Edson con- 



MRS. SARAH P. EDSON. 447 

tinued her labors till the end of the war. Nothing could keep 
her from the fulfilment of what she regarded as an imperative 
duty^ and nobly she achieved her purpose, so far as her indi- 
vidual efforts were concerned. 

A lady, herself ardently engaged in the Avork of relief, and 
supply for the soldiers, visited the Army of the Potomac in com- 
pany with Mrs. Edson, in the winter of 1865, not long before the 
close of the war. She describes the reception of Mrs. Edson, 
among these brave men to whom she had ministered during the 
terrific campaign of the preceding summer, as a complete ovation. 
The enthusiasm was overwhelming to the quiet woman who had 
come among them, not looking nor hoping for more than the pri- 
vilege of a pleasant greeting from those endeared to her by the 
very self-sacrificing efforts by which she had brought them relief, 
and perhaps been the means of saving their lives. 

Irrepressible shouts, cheers, tears and thanks saluted her on 
every side, and she passed on humbled rather than elated by the 
excess of this enthusiastic gratitude. 



MISS MARIA M. C. HALL 




LTHOUGH the Federal City, Washington, was at the 
outbreak of the war more intensely Southern in senti- 
ment than many of the Southern cities, at least so far 
as its native, or long resident inhabitants could make 
it so, yet there were even in that Sardis, a few choice spirits, 
reared under the shadow of the Capitol, whose patriotism was as 
lofty, earnest and enduring as that of any of the citizens of any 
Northern or Western state. 

Among these, none have given better evidence of their intense 
love of their country and its institutions, than Miss Hall. Born 
and reared in the Capital, highly educated, and of pleasing 
manners and address, she was well fitted to grace any circle, and 
to shine amid the gayeties of that fashionable and frivolous city. 
But the religion of the compassionate and merciful Jesus had 
made a deep lodgment in her heart, and in imitation of his ex- 
ample, she was ready to forsake the halls of gayety and fashion, 
if she might but minister to the sick, the suffering and the sor- 
rowing. Surrounded by Secessionists, her father too far advanced 
in years to bear arms for the country he loved, with no brother 
old enough to be enrolled among the nation's defenders, her pa- 
triotism was as fervid as that of any soldier of the Republic, and 
she resolved to consecrate herself to the service of the nation, by 
ministrations to the sick and wounded. Her first opportunity 
of entering upon this duty was by the reception into her father's 
house of one of the sick soldiers before the first battle of Bull 

448 



MISS MARIA M. C. HALL. 449 

Run, who by her kindly care was restored to health. "When the 
Indiana Hospital was established in the Patent Office building 
on the 1st of August, 1861, Miss Hall sought a position there as 
nurse; but Miss Dix had already issued her circular announcing 
that no nurses under thirty-five years of age would be accepted; 
and in vain might she plead her willingness and ability to 
undergo hardships and the uncomfortable duties pertaining to the 
nurse's position. She therefore applied to the kind-hearted but 
eccentric Mrs. Almira Tales, whose hearty and positive ways had 
given her the entree of the Government hospitals from the first, 
but she too discouraged her from the effort, assuring her, in her 
blunt way, that there was no poetry in this sort of thing, that 
the men were very dirty, hungry and rough, and that they would 
not appreciate refinement of manner, or be grateful for the atten- 
tion bestowed on them by a delicate and educated lady. Finding 
that these representations failed to divert Miss Hall, and her 
sister who accompanied her, from their purpose, Mrs. Tales threw 
open the door of one of the wards, saying as she did so, ^^Well, 
girls, here they are, with everything to be done for them. You 
will find work enough.^' 

There Avas, indeed, work enough. The men were very dirty, 
the "sacred soiF' of Virginia clinging to their clothing and per- 
sons in plenty. Their hair was matted and tangled, and often, 
not free from vermin, and they were as Mrs. Tales had said, a 
rough set. But those apparently fragile and delicate girls had 
great energy and resolution, and the subject of our sketch was 
not disposed to undertake an enterprise and then abandon it. 
She had trials of other kinds, to bear. The surgeons afforded 
her few or no facilities for her work; and evidently expected that 
her whim of nursing would soon be given over. Then came the 
general order for the removal of volunteer nurses from the hos- 
pitals ; this she evaded by enrolling herself as nurse, and dra^ving 
army pay, which she distributed to the men. Tor nearly a year 
she remained in this position, without command, with much hard 
57 



450 

work to do, and no recognition of it from any official source; but 
though the situation was not in any respect agreeable, there was 
a consciousness of usefulness, of service of the Master in it to 
sustain her; and while under her gentle ministrations cleanliness 
took the place of filth, order of disorder, and profanity was ban- 
ished, because "the lady did not like it,'' it was also her privi- 
lege occasionally to lead the wanderer from God back to the 
Saviour he had deserted, and to point the sinner to the " Lamb 
of God that taketh away the sins of the world/' In the summer 
of 1862, Miss Hall joined the Hospital Transport service, first 
on the Daniel Webster, ISTo. 2, a steamer which had been used for 
the transportation of troops from Washington. After the sick 
and wounded of this transport had been disposed of. Miss Hall 
was transferred to the Daniel Webster, the original hospital trans- 
port of the Sanitary Commission, where she labored faithfully 
for some weeks after the change of base to Harrison's Landing, 
when she was associated with Mrs. Almira Fales in caring for 
the suffering wounded on shore. They found the poor fellows in 
a terrible plight, in rotten and leaky tents, and lying on the damp 
soil, sodden with the heavy rains, and poisonous from the mala- 
rial exhalations, in need of clothing, food, medicine, and comfort ; 
and though but scantily supplied with the needful stores, these 
ladies spared no labor or exertion to improve tlieir condition, and 
they were successful to a greater extent than would have seemed 
possible. When the army returned to Alexandria, Miss Hall 
visited her home for a short interval of rest ; but the great battle 
of Antietam called her again to her chosen work ; she went to 
the battle-field, intending to join Mrs. Harris, of the Ladies' Aid 
Society of Philadelphia, who was already at work there, and had 
telegraphed for her; but being unable to find her at first, she 
entered a hospital of wounded Rebel prisoners, and ministered to 
them until Mrs. Harris having ascertained her situation, sent for 
her to come to Smoketown General Hospital, where at that time 
the wounded of French's Division were gathered, and which 



MISS MARIA M. C. HALL. 451 

ultimately received the wounded of the different corps who were 
unable to endure the fatigue of transportation to Washington, 
Baltimore or Philadelphia. Dr. Yanderkieft, an accomplished 
physician and a man of rare tenderness, amiability and goodness, 
w^as at this time the surgeon of the Smoketown Hospital, and 
appreciating Miss Hall's skill and adaptation to her work, he wel- 
comed her cordially, and did everything in his power to render 
her position pleasant. Mrs. Harris was soon called to other 
scenes, and after Fredericksburg, went to Falmouth and remained 
there several months, but Miss Hall, and Mrs. Husband who was 
now associated with her remained at Smoketown ; and when Mrs. 
Husband left, Miss Hall still continued till May, 1863, when 
the hospital was broken up, and the remaining inmates sent to 
other points.* 

■^ The following letter addressed to Miss Hall, by one of the wounded sol- 
diers under her care at the Smoketown Hospital, a Frenchman who, while a 
great sufferer, kept the whole tent full of wounded men cheerful and bright 
with his own cheerfulness, singing the Marseillaise and other patriotic songs, is 
but one example of thousands, of the regard felt for her, by the soldiers whose 
sufferings she had relieved by her gentle and kindly ministrations. 

'•'Manchester, Mass. June 28th, 1866. 

" Miss M. M. C. Hall : — There are kind deeds received which a man cannot 
ever forget, more especially when they are done by one who does not expect 
any rewards for them, but the satisfaction of having helped humanity. 

" But as one who first unfortunate, and next fortunate enough to come under 
your kind cares, I come rather late perhaps to pay you a tribute of gratitude 
which should have been done ere this. I say pay, — I do not mean that with 
few lines in a broken English, I expect to reward you for your good care of 
me while I was lying at Smoketown — no, words or gold could not repay you 
for your sufferings, privations, the painful hard sights which the angels of the 
battle-field are willing to face, — no, God alone can reward you. Yet, please 
accept, Miss, the assurance of my profound respect, and my everlasting grati- 
tude. May the God of Justice, Freedom and love, ever protect you, and re- 
ward you for your conduct on this earth is the wish of 

" Your obedient and respectful servant, 

"Julius F. Eabardy." 

The Frenchman who sometimes sang the Marseillaise — formerly of the 12th 
Massachusetts Volunteers. 



452 

One feature of this Hospital-life both at Sraoketown, and the 
other Hospitals with which Miss Hall was connected, a feature to 
which many of those under her care revert with great pleasure, 
was the evening or family prayers. Those of the convalescent 
soldiers who cared to do so were accustomed to assemble every 
evening at her tent, and engage in social worship, the chaplain 
usually being present and taking the lead of the meeting, and in 
the event of his absence, one of the soldiers being the leader. 
This evening hour was looked for with eagerness, and to some, 
we might say, to many, it was the beginning of new hopes and a 
new life. Many, after rejoining their regiments, wrote back to 
their friends, " We think of you all at the sweet hour of prayer, 
and know that you will remember us when you gather in the lit- 
tle tent." The life in the Hospital, was by this and other means, 
rendered the vestibule of a new and holy life, a life of faith and 
Christian endeavor to many, and this young Christian woman was 
enabled to exercise an influence for good which shall endure 
through the untold ages of eternity. 

After a short period of rest. Miss Hall again reported for duty 
at the Naval Academy Hospital, Annapolis, whither considerable 
numbers of the wounded from Gettysburg were brought, and 
where her old friend Dr. Vanderkieft was the Surgeon-in-charge. 
After a time^ the exchanged prisoners from Belle Isle and Libby 
Prison, and subsequently those from Andersonville, Florence, 
Salisbury and Wilmington, began to come into this Hospital, and 
it was Miss HalPs painful privilege to be permitted to minister 
to these poor victims of Rebel cruelty and hate, who amid the 
horrors of the charnel houses, had not only lost their health, but 
almost their semblance to humanity, and reduced by starvation 
and suffering to a condition of fatuity, often could not remember 
their own names. In these scenes of horror, with the patience 
and tenderness born only of Christianity, she ministered to these 
poor helpless men, striving to bring them back to life, and health, 
and reason, comforting them in their sufferings, pointing the dy- 



MISS MARIA M. C. HALL. 453 

ing to a suffering Saviour, and corresponding with their friends 
as circumstances required. 

It was at Dr. Vanderkieft's request, that she came to this Hos- 
pital, and at first she was placed in charge of Section Five, con- 
sisting of the Hospital tents outside of the main building. Mrs. 
Adaline Tyler, (Sister Tyler), was at this time lady Superintend- 
ent of the entire Hospital, and administered her duties with great 
skill and ability. When, in the spring of 1864, as we have else- 
where recorded, the impaired health of Mrs. Tyler rendered her 
further stay in the Hospital impossible. Miss Hall, though 
young, was deemed by Dr. Vanderkieft, most eminently qualified 
to succeed her in the general superintendency of this great Hos- 
pital, and she remained in charge of it till it was closed in the 
summer of 1865. Here she had at times, more than four thou- 
sand of these poor sufferers under her care, and although she had 
from ten to twenty assistants, each in charge of a section, yet her 
own labors were extremely arduous, and her care and responsi- 
bility such as few could have sustained. The danger, as well as 
the care, was very much increased by the prevalence of typhus- 
fever, in a very malignant form in the Hospital, brought there 
by some of the poor victims of rebel barbarity from Anderson- 
ville. Three of her most valued assistants contracted this fearful 
disease from the patients whom they had so carefully watched 
over and died, martyrs to their philanthropy and patriotism. 

During her residence at this Hospital, Miss Hall often con- 
tributed to "The Crutch," a soldier's weekly paper, edited by 
Miss Titcomb, one of the assistant superintendents, to which tl^e 
other ladies, the officers and some of the patients were also con- 
tributors. This paper created much interest in the hospital. 

Our record of the work of this active and devoted Chris- 
tian woman is but brief, for though there were almost num- 
berless instances of suffering, of heroism and triumph pass- 
ing constantly under her eye, yet the work of one day was so 
much like that of every other, that it afforded little of incident 



454 

in lier own labors to require a longer narrative. Painful as many 
of her experiences were^ yet she found as did many others who 
engaged in it that it was a blessed and delightful work^ and in 
the retrospect, more than a year after its close, she uttered these 
words in regard to it, words to which the hearts of many other 
patriotic women will respond, " I mark my Hospital days as my 
happiest ones, and thank ^od for the way in which He led me 
into the good work, and for the strength which kept me through 
it all." 



THE HOSPITAL CORPS AT THE NAVAL ACADEMY 
HOSPITAL, ANNAPOLIS. 




HOUGH the Naval Academy buildings at Annapolis 
had been used for hospital purposes, from almost tlie 
first months of the war, they did not acquire celebrity, 
or accommodate a very large number of patients until 
August, 1863, when Surgeon Vanderkieft took charge of it, and it 
received great numbers of the wounded men from Gettysburg. 
As the number of these was reduced by deaths, convalescence and 
discharge from the army, their places were more than supplied by 
the returning prisoners, paroled or discharged, from Libby, Belle 
Isle, Andersonville, Millen, Salisbury, Florence and Wilmington. 
These poor fellows under the horrible cruelties, systematically 
practiced by the rebel authorities, with the avowed intention of 
weakening the Union forces, had been starved, frozen, maimed 
and tortured until they had almost lost the semblance of human- 
ity, and one of the noble women who cared for them so tenderly, 
states that she often found herself involuntarily placing her hand 
upon her cheek to ascertain whether their flesh was like hers, 
human and vitalized. The sunken hollow cheeks, the parchment 
skin drawn so tightly over the bones, the great, cavernous, lack- 
luster eyes, the half idiotic stare, the dreamy condition, the loss 
of memory even of their own names, and the wonder with which 
they regarded the most ordinary events, so strange to them after 
their long and fearful experience, all made them seem more like 
beings from some other world, than inhabitants of this. Many 

455 



456 

of them never recovered fully their memory or reason ; the iron 
had entered the soul. Others lingered long on the confines of two 
worlds, now rallying a little and then falling back, till finally the 
flickering life went out suddenly; a few of the hardiest and 
toughest survived, and recovered partial though seldom or never 
complete health. During a part of the first year of Dr. Van- 
derkieft's administration, Mrs. Adaline Tyler [" Sister Tyler '') 
was Lady Superintendent of the hospital, and the sketch else- 
where given of her life shows how earnestly and ably she 
labored to promote the interest of its inmates. During most of 
this time Miss Maria M. C. Hall had charge of section five, con- 
sisting of the hospital tents which occupied a part of the academ- 
ical campus. Miss Helen M. Noye, a young lady from Buffalo, 
a very faithful, enthusiastic and cheerful worker, was her assis- 
tant, and remained for nearly a year in the hospitel. 

When in the sj)ring of 1864, Miss Hall was appointed ISIrs. 
Tyler's successor as Lady Superintendent of the hospital, its 
numerous large wards required several assistant superintendents 
who should direct the preparation of the special diet, and the other 
delicacies so desirable for the sick, attend to the condition of the 
men, ascertain their circumstances and history, correspond with 
their friends, and endeavor so 'far as possible to cheer, comfort and 
encourage their patients. 

When the number of patients was largest twenty of these 
assistants were required, and the illness of some, or their change 
to other fields, rendered the list a varying one, over thirty different 
ladies being connected with the hospital during the two years from 
July, 1863, to July, 1865. 

A considerable number of these ladies had accompanied Mrs. 
Tyler to AnnapoKs, having previously been her assistants in the 
general hospital at Chester, Pennsylvania. Among these were 
nine from Maine, viz.. Miss Louise Titcomb, Miss Susan ^N'ewhall, 
Miss Rebecca E,. Usher, Miss Almira Quimby, Miss Emily W. 
Dana, Miss Adeline Walker, IMiss Mary E. Dupee, ^^liss Mar}^ 



HOSPITAL CORPS AT THE :N^AVAL ACADEMY, ANNAPOLIS. 457 

Pierson, and Mrs. Eunice D. Merrill, all women of excellent abil- 
ities and culture, and admirably adapted to tlieir work. One of 
this band of sisters, Miss Adeline Walker, died on the 28th of 
A23ril, 1865, of malignant typhus, contracted in the discharge of 
her duties in the hospital. 

Of her Miss Hall wrote in the Crutch, ^^ She slept at sunset, 
sinking into the stillness of death as peacefully as a melted day 
into the darkness of the night. For two years and a half — longer 
than almost any other here — she had pursued her labors in this hos- 
pital, and with her ready sympathy with the suffering or wronged, 
had ministered to many needy ones the balm of comfort and 
healing. Her quick wit and keen repartee has served to brighten 
up many an hour otherwise dull and unhomelike in our little 
circle of workers, gathered in our quarters ofP duty. 

"So long an inmate of this hospital its every part was familiar 
to her; its trees and flowers she loved; in all its beauties she 
rejoiced. We could almost fancy a hush in nature's music, as we 
walked behind her coffin, under the beautiful trees in the bright 
May sunshine. 

" It was a touching thing to see the soldier-boys carrying the 
coffin of her who had been to them in hours of pain a minister 
of good and comfort. Her loss is keenly felt among them, and 
tears are on the face of more than one strong man as he speaks 
of her. One more veteran soldier has fallen in the ranks, one 
more faithful patriot-heart is stilled. No less to her than to the 
soldier in the field shall be awarded the heroic honor. 

'For God metes to each his measure; 

And the woman's patient prayer, 
No less than ball or bayonet 
Brings the victory unaware.' 

Patient prayer and work for the victory to our country was the 
life of our sister gone from us; and in the da^vning of our brighter 
days, and the coming glory of our regenerated country, it is hard 
to lay her away in unconsciousness ; hard to close her eyes against 

58 



458 

the bright sunsliine of God's smile upon a ransomed people ; hard 
to send her lifeless form aAvay from us, alone to the grave in her 
far off home; hard to realize that one so familiar in our little 
band shall go no more in and out among us. But we say fare- 
well to her not without hope. Her earnest spirit, ever eager in 
its questioning of what is truth, was not at rest with simply 
earthly things. Her reason was unsatisfied, and she longed for 
more than was revealed to her of the Divine. To the land of 
full realities she is gone. We trust that in his light she shall see 
light; that waking in his likeness, she shall be satisfied, and ever- 
more at rest. We cannot mourn that she fell at her post. Her 
warfare is accomplished, and the oft-expressed thought of her 
heart is in her death fulfilled. She has said, ' It is noble to die 
at one's post, with the armor on; to fall where the work has been 
done.''' 

One of her associates from her own State thus speaks of her: 
" Miss Walker left many friends and a comfortable home in Port- 
land, in the second year of the war. Her devotion and interest 
in the work so congenial to her feelings, increased with every 
year's experience, imtil she found herself bound to it heart and 
hand. Her large comprehension, too, of all the circumstances 
connected with the soldier's experience in and outside of hospital, 
quickened her sympathies and adapted her to the part she was to 
share, as counsellor and friend. Many a soldier lives, who can 
pay her a Avorthy tribute of gratitude for her care and sympathy 
in his hour of need ; and in the beyond, of the thousands who 
died in the cause of liberty, there are many who may call her 
'blessed.'" 

Massachusetts was also largely represented among the faithful 
workers of the Naval Academy Hospital, at Annapolis. Among 
these Miss Abbie J. Howe, of Brookfield ; Miss Kate P. Thomp- 
son, of Worcester, whose excessive labors and the serious illness 
which followed, have probably rendered her an invalid for life; 
Miss Eudora Clark, of Boston, Miss Ruth L. Ellis, of Bridge- 



HOSPITAL CORPS AT THE NAVAL ACADEMY, ANNAPOLIS. 459 

water, Miss Sarah Allen, of Wilbraham, Miss Agnes Gillis, of 
Lowell, and Miss Maria Josslyn, of Roxbury, were those who 
were most laborious and faithful. From New Jersey there came 
a faithful and zealous worker. Miss Charlotte Ford, of Morris- 
town. From New York there were Miss Helen M. Noye, of 
Buffalo, already named, Mrs. Guest, also of Buffalo, Miss Emily 
Gove, of Peru, Miss Mary Gary, of Albany, Miss Ella Wolcott, 
of Elmira, and Miss M. A. B. Young, of Morristown, New York. 
This lady, one of the most devoted and faithful of the hospital 
nurses, was also a martyr to her fidelity and patriotism, dying of 
typhus fever contracted in her attendance upon her patients, on 
the 12th of January, 1865. 

Miss Young left a pleasant home in St. Lawrence County, 
New York, soon after the commencement of the war, with her 
brother, Captain James Young, of the Sixtieth New York Vol- 
unteers, and was an active minister of good to the sick and 
wounded of that regiment. She took great pride in the regiment, 
wearing its badge and having full faith in its valor. When the 
Sixtieth went into active service, she entered a hospital at Balti- 
more, but her regiment was never forgotten. She heard from it 
almost daily through her soldier-brother, between whom and 
herself existed the most tender devotion and earnest sympathy. 
From Baltimore she was transferred to Annapolis early in Mrs. 
Tyler's administration. In 1864, she suffered from the small- 
pox, and ever after her recovery she cared for all who were affected 
with that disease in the hospital. 

Her thorough identity with the soldier's life and entire sacrifice 
to the cause, was perhaps most fully and touchingly evidenced by 
her oft repeated expression of a desire to be buried among the 
soldiers. When in usual health, visiting the graves of those to 
whom she had ministered in the hospital, she said, "If I die in 
hospital, let me buried here among my boys." This request was 
sacredly regarded, and she was borne to her last resting-place by 
soldiers .to whom she had ministered in her own days of health. 



460 

Another of the martyrs in this service of philanthropy^ was 
Miss Rose M. Billing, of Washington, District of Columbia, a 
young lady of most winning manners, and spoken of by Miss 
Hall as one of the most devoted and conscientious workers, she 
ever knew — an earnest Christian, caring always for the spiritual 
as well as the physical wants of her men. She was of delicate, 
fragile constitution, and a deeply sympathizing nature. From 
the commencement of the war, she had been earnestly desirous of 
participating in the personal labors of the hospital, and finally 
persuaded her mother, (who, knowing her frail health, was reluc- 
tant to have her enter upon such duties), to give her consent. 
She commenced her first service with Miss Hall, in the Indiana 
Hospital, in the Patent Office building, in the autumn of 1861, 
and subsequently served in the Falls Church Hospital, and at 
Fredericksburg. Early in 1863 she came to Annapolis, and no 
one of the nurses was more faithful and devoted in labors for the 
soldiers. Twice she had been obliged to leave her chosen work 
for a short time in consequence of illness, but she had hastened 
back to it with the utmost alacrity, as soon as she could again 
undertake her work. She had been eminently successful, in 
bringing up some cases of the fever, deemed by the surgeons, 
hopeless, and though she herself felt that she was exceeding her 
strength, or as she expressed it, " wearing out,'^ she could not and 
would not leave her soldier boys while they were so ill; and 
when the disease fastened upon her, she had not sufficient vital 
energy left to throw it off. She failed rapidly and died on the 
14th of January, 1865, after two weeks' illness. Her mother, 
after her death, received numerous letters from soldiers for whom 
she had cared, lamenting her loss and declaring that but for her 
faithful attentions, they should not have been in the land of the 
living. Among those who have given their life to the cause of 
their country in the hospitals, no purer or saintlier soul has ex- 
changed the sorrows, the troubles and the pains of earth for the 
bliss of heaven, than Rose M. Billing. 



OTHER LABORS OF SOME OF THE MEMBERS OF THE 
ANNAPOLIS HOSPITAL CORPS. 




OME of the ladies named in the preceding sketch had 
passed through other experiences of hospital life, before 
becoming connected with the Naval Academy Hospital 
at Annapolis. Among these, remarkable for their fi- 
delity to the cause they had undertaken to serve, were several of 
the ladies from Maine, the Maine-stay of the Annapolis Hospital, 
as Dr. Vanderkieft playfully called them. We propose to devote 
a little space to sketches of some of these faithful workers. 

Miss Louise Titcomb, was from Portland, Maine, a young 
lady of high culture and refinement, and from the beginning of 
the War, had taken a deep interest in working for the soldiers, 
in connection with the other patriotic ladies of that city. When 
in the early autumn of 1862, Mrs. Adaline Tyler, as we have al- 
ready said in our sketch of her, took charge as Lady Superin- 
tendent of the Hospital at Chester, Pennsylvania, which had 
previously been in the care of a Committee of ladies of the vil- 
lage, she sought for volunteer assistants in her work, who would 
give themselves wholly to it. 

Miss Titcomb, Miss Susan Newhall, and Miss Rebecca R. 
Usher, all from Portland, were among the first to enter upon this 
work. They remained there eight months, until the remaining 
patients had become convalescent, and the war had made such 
progress Southward that the post was too far from the field to be 
maintained as a general hospital. 

461 



462 

The duties of tliese ladies at Chester, were the dispensing of 
the extra and low diet to the patients ; the charge of their cloth- 
ing ; watching with, and attending personally to the wants of 
those 23atients whose condition was most critical ; writing for and 
reading to such of the sick or wounded as needed or desired these 
services, and attending to innumerable details for their cheer and 
comfort. Dr. Le Comte, the Surgeon-in-charge, and the assist- 
ant Surgeons of the wards, were very kind, considerate and cour- 
teous to these ladies, and showed by their conduct how highly 
they appreciated their services. 

In August, 1863, when Mrs. Tyler was transferred to the i*s^aval 
Academy Hospital, at Annapolis, these ladies went thither with 
her, where they were joined soon after by Miss Adeline Walker, 
Miss Almira F. Quimby, and Miss Mary Pierson, all of 
Portland, and Miss Mary E. Dupee, Miss Emily W. Dana^ and 
Mrs. Eunice D. Merrill, all from Maine. Their duties here were 
more varied and fatiguing than at Chester. One of them de- 
scribes them thus : " The Hospital was often crowded with pa- 
tients enduring the worst forms of disease and suffering; and 
added to our former duties were new and untried ones incident 
to the terrible and helpless condition of these returned prisoners. 
Evening Schools were instituted for the benefit of the convales- 
cents, in which we shared as teachers ; at the Weekly Lyceum, 
through the winter, the ladies in turn edited and read a paper, 
containing interesting contributions from inmates of the Hospital ; 
they devised and took part in various entertainments for the 
benefit of the convalescents ; held singing and prayer-meetings 
frequently in the wards ; watched over the dying, were present 
at all the funerals, and aided largely in forwarding the effects, and 
where it was possible the bodies of the deceased to their friends. 
Five of these faithful nurses were attacked by the typhus fever, 
contracted by their attention to the patients, exhausted as they 
were by overwork, from the great number of the very sick and 
helpless men brought to the hospital in the winter of 1864-5; 



OTHER LABORS OF THE ANNAPOLIS HOSPITAL CORPS. 463 

and the illness of these threw a double duty upon those who were 
fortunate enough to escape the epidemic. To the honor of these 
ladieSj it should be said that not one of them shrank from doing 
her full proportion of the work, and nearly all who survived, re- 
mained to the close of the war. For twenty months, Miss Tit- 
comb was absent from duty but two days, and others had a record 
nearly as satisfactory. Nearly all would have done so but for 
illness. 

Miss Rebecca Usher, of Avhom we have spoken as one of 
Miss Titcomb's associates, in the winter of 1864-5, accepted the 
invitation of the Maine Camp and Hospital Association, to go to 
City Point, and minister to the sick and wounded, especially of 
the Maine regiments there. She was accompanied by Miss Mary 
A. Dupee, who was one of the assistants at Annapolis, from Maine. 

The Maine Camp and Hospital Association, was an organiza- 
tion founded by benevolent ladies of Portland, and subsequently 
having its auxiliaries in all parts of the state, having for its 
object the supplying of needful aid and comfort, and personal 
attention, primarily to the soldiers of Maine, and secondarily to 
those from other states. Mrs. James E. Fernald, Mrs. J. S. 
Eaton, Mrs. Elbridge Bacon, Mrs. William Preble, Miss Harriet 
Fox, and others were the managers of the association. Of these 
Mrs. J. S. Eaton, the widow of a Baptist clergyman, formerly a 
pastor in Portland, went very early to the front, with Mrs. Isa- 
bella Fogg, the active agent of the association, of w^hom we have 
more to say elsewhere, and the two labored most earnestly for the 
welfare of the soldiers. Mrs. Fogg finally went to the Western 
armies, and Mrs. Eaton invited Miss Usher and Miss Dupee, 
with some of the other Maine ladies to join her at City Point, in 
the winter of 1864-5. Mrs. Ruth S. Mayhew had been a faith- 
ful assistant at City Point from the first, and after Mrs. Fogg 
went to the West, had acted as agent of the association there. 
Miss Usher joined Mrs. Eaton and Mrs. Mayhew, in December, 
1864, but Miss Dupee did not leave Annapolis till April, 1865. 



464 woma:n^'s work in the civil war. 

The work at City Point was essentially different from that at 
Annapolis, and less saddening in its character. The sick soldiers 
from Maine were visited in the hospital and supplied with deli- 
cacies, and those who though in health were in need of extra 
clothing, etc., were supplied as they presented themselves. The 
Maine Camp and Hospital Association were always ready to 
respond to a call for supplies from their agents, and there was 
never any lack for any length of time. In May, 1865, Mrs. 
Eaton and her assistants established an agency at Alexandria, 
and they carried their supplies to the regiments encamped around 
that city, and visited the comparatively few sick remaining in 
the hospitals. The last of June their work seemed to be com- 
pleted and they returned home. 

Miss Mary A. Dupee was devoted to the cause from the begin- 
ning of the war. She offered her services when the first regiment 
left Portland, and though they were not then needed, she held 
herself in constant readiness to go where they were, working 
meantime for the soldiers as opportunity presented. When Mrs. 
Tyler was transferred to Annapolis, she desired Miss Susan New- 
hall, a most faithful and indefatigable worker for the soldiers, 
who had been with her at Chester, to bring with her another who 
was like-minded. The invitation was given to Miss Dupee, who 
gladly accepted it. At Annapolis she had charge of thirteen 
wards and had a serving-room, where the food was sent ready 
cooked, for her to distribute according to the directions of the 
surgeons to "her boys." Before breakfast she went out to see 
that that meal was properly served, and to ascertain the condition 
of the sickest patients. Then forenoon and afternoon, she visited 
each one in turn, ministering to their comfort as far as possible. The 
work, though wearing, and at times accompanied with some dan- 
ger of contagion, she found pleasant, notwithstanding its connec- 
tion with so many sad scenes. The consciousness of doing good 
more than compensated for any toil or sacrifice, and in the re- 
view of her work, Miss Dupee expresses the belief that she derived 



OTHER LABORS OF THE ANNAPOLIS HOSPITAL CORPS. 465 

as much benefit from this philanthropic toil as she bestowed. As 
we have already said, she was for three months at City Point and 
elsewhere ministering to the soldiers of her native State. 

Miss Abbie J. Howe, of Brookfield, Massachusetts, was an- 
other of the Annapolis Hospital Corps deserving of especial 
mention for her untiring devotion to the temporal and spiritual 
welfare of the sick and wounded who were under her charge. 
We regret our inability to obtain so full an account of her work 
and its incidents as we desired, but we cannot suffer her to pass 
unnoticed. Miss Howe had from the beginning of the war been 
earnestly desirous to enter upon the work of personal service to 
the soldiers in the hospitals, but considerations of duty, the oppo- 
sition of her friends, etc., had detained her at home until the 
way was unexpectedly opened for her in September, 1863. She 
came directly to Annapolis, and during her whole stay there had 
charge of the same wards which she first entered, although a 
change was made in the class of patients under her care in the 
spring of 1864. At first these wards were filled with private 
soldiers, but in April, 1864, they were occupied by the wounded 
and sick officers of the Officers' Hospital at that time established 
in the IN^aval Academy under charge of Surgeon Vanderkieffc. 

Miss Howe brought to her work not only extraordinary skill 
and tact in the performance of her duties, but a deep j)ersonal 
interest in her patients, a care and thoughtful ness for Avhat might 
be best adapted to each individual case, as if each had been her 
own brother, and beyond this, an intense desire to promote their 
spiritual good. An earnest and devoted Christian, whose highest 
motive of action was the desire to do sometliing for the honor 
and glory of the Master she loved, she entered upon her duties 
in such a spirit as we may imagine actuated the saints and mar- 
tyrs of the early Christian centuries. 

We cannot forbear introducing here a brief description of her 
work from one who knew her well : — ^^She came to Annapolis 
with a spirit i*eady and eager to do all things and suffer all things 

59 



466 

for the privilege of being allowed to work for the good of the 
soldiers. Nothing was too trivial for her to be engaged in for 
their sakes, — nothing was too great to undertake for the least 
advantage to one of her smallest and humblest patients. This 
was true of her regard to their bodily comfort and health — but 
still more true of her concern for their spiritual good. I remem- 
ber very well that when she had been at work only a day or two 
she spoke to me with real joy of one of her sick patients, telling 
me of a hope she had that he was a Christian and prepared for 
death. =i< * hc gj-^^ loved the soldiers for the cause for which 
they suffered — but she loved them most, because she was actuated 
in all things by her love for her Saviour, and for them He had 
died. * >i^ 5H J ugg(j ^Q fgg} that her presence SLud influence, 
even if she had not been strong enough to work at all, would 
have been invaluable — the soldiers so instinctively recognized her 
true interest in them, — her regard for the right and her abhorrence 
of anything like deceit or untruthfulness, that they could not help 
trying to be good for her sake." 

Miss How^e took a special interest in the soldier-nurses — the 
men detailed for extra duty in the wards. She had a very high 
opinion of their tenderness and faithfulness in their most trying 
and wearying work, and of their devotion to their suffering com- 
rades. This estimate was undoubtedly true of most of those in 
her wards, and perhaps of a majority of those in the Naval Acad- 
emy Hospital; but it would have been difficult for them to have 
been other than faithful and tender under the influence of her 
example and the loyalty they could not help feeling to a woman 
^^so nobly good and true.'' Like all the others engaged in these 
labors among the returned prisoners. Miss Howe speaks of her 
work as one which brought its own abundant reward, in the in- 
expressible joy she experienced in being able to do something to 
relieve and comfort those poor suffering ones, wounded, bleeding, 
and tortured for their country's sake, and at times to have the 
privilege of telling the story of the cross to eager dying men, who 
listened in their agony longing to know a Saviour's love. 



MRS. A. H. AND MISS S. H. GIBBONS. 




RS. GIBBONS is very well known in the City of New 
York where she resides, as an active philanthropist, 
devoting a large portion of her time and strength to 
the various charitable and reformatory enterprises in 
which she is engaged. This tendency to labors undertaken for 
the good of others, is, in part, a portion of her inheritance. The 
daughter of that good man, some years ago deceased, whose 
memory is so heartily cherished, by all to whom the record of a 
thousand brave and kindly deeds is known, so warmly by a mul- 
titude of friends, and by the oppressed and suifering — Isaac T. 
Hopper — we are justified in saying that his mantle has fallen upon 
this his favorite child. 

The daughter of the noble and steadfast old Friend, could 
hardly fail to be known as a friend of the slave. Like her father 
she was ready to labor, and sacrifice and sufter in his cause, and 
had already made this apparent, had borne persecution, the 
crucial test of principle, before the war which gave to the world 
the prominent idea of freedom for all, and thus wiped the darkest 
stain from our starry banner, was inaugurated. 

The record of the army work of Mrs. Gibbons, does not com- 
mence until the autumn of 1861. Previous to that time, her 
labors for the soldier had been performed at home, where there 
was much to be done in organizing a class of effort hitherto un- 
known to the women of our country. But she had always felt a 

strong desire to aid the soldiers by personal sacrifices. 

467 



468 

It was quite possible for her to leave home, which so many 
mothers of families, whatever their wishes, were unable to do. 
Accordingly, accompanied by her eldest daughter. Miss Sarah H. 
Gibbons, now Mrs. Emerson, she proceeded to Washington, about 
the time indicated. 

There, for some weeks, mother and daughter regularly visited 
the hospitals, of which there were already many in the Capitol 
City, ministering to the inmates, and distributing the stores with 
which they were liberally provided by the kindness of friends, 
from their own private resources, and from those of "The Wo- 
man's Central Association of Relief,'^ already in active and benefi- 
cent operation in New York. 

Their work was, however, principally done in the Patent 
Office Hospital, where they took a regular charge of a certain 
number of patients, and rendered excellent service, where service 
was, at that time, greatly needed. 

While thus engaged they were one day invited by a friend 
from New York to take a drive in the outskirts of the city. 
Washington was at that time like a great camp, and was envi- 
roned by fortifications, with the camps of different divisions, 
brigades, regiments, to each of which were attached the larger 
and smaller hospitals, where the sick and suffering languished, 
afar from the comforts and affectionate cares of home, and not yet 
inured to the privations and diseomforts of army life. It can 
without doubt be said that they were patient, and when we 
remember that the most of them were volunteers, fresh from 
home, and new to war, that perhaps was all that could reason- 
ably be expected of them. 

The drive of Mrs. Gibbons, and her friends extended further 
than was at first intended, and they found themselves at Fall's 
Church, fifteen miles from the city. Here was a small force of 
New York troops, and their hospital containing about forty men, 
most of them very sick with typhoid fever. 

Mrs. Gibbons and her daughter entered the hospital. All 



MRS. A. H. GIBBONS AND MISS SARAH H. GIBBONS. 469 

around were the emaciated forms, and pale, suffering faces of the 
men — their very looks an appeal for kindness which it was hardly 
possible for these ladies to resist. 

One of them, a young man from Penn Yan, New York, fixed 
his sad imploring gaze upon the face of Mrs. Gibbons. Pale as 
if the seal of death had already been set upon his features, dread- 
fully emaciated, and too feeble for the least movement, except 
those of the large, dark, restless eyes, which seemed by the very 
intensity of their expression to draw her toward him. She 
approached and compassionately asked if there was anything she 
could do for him. The reply seemed to throw upon her a respon- 
sibility too heavy to be borne. 

"Come and take care of me, and I shall get well. If you do 
not come, I shall die." 

It Avas very hard to say she could not come, and with the con- 
stantly recurring thought of his words, every moment made it 
harder. It was, however, impossible at that time. 

After distributing some little offerings they had brought, the 
party was forced to leave, carrying with them a memory of such 
suffering and misery as they had not before encountered. FalPs 
Church was situated in a nest of secessionists, who would have 
been open rebels except for the presence of the troops. ISTo 
woman had ever shown her face within the walls of its hospital. 
The routine of duty had probably been obeyed, but there had 
been little sympathy and only the blundering care of men, en- 
tirely ignorant of the needs of the sick. The men were dying 
rapidly, and the number in the hospital fast diminishing, not by 
convalescence, but by death. 

After she had gone away, the scene constantly recurred to Mrs. 
Gibbons, and she felt that a field of duty opened before her, which 
she had no right to reject. In a few days an opportunity for 
another visit occurred, which was gladly embraced. The young 
vohmteer was yet living, but too feeble to speak. Again his eyes 
mutely implored help, and seemed to say that only that could 



470 



beat back the advances of death. This time both ladies had come 
with the intention of remaining. 

The surgeon was ready to welcome them, but told them there 
was no place for them to live. But that difficulty was overcome, 
as difficulties almost always are by a determined will. The pro- 
prietor of a neighboring " saloon/^ or eating-house, was persuaded 
to give the ladies a loft floored with unplaned boards, and boast- 
ing for its sole furniture, a bedstead and a barrel to serve as table 
and toilet. Here for the sum of five dollars per week, each, they 
svere allowed to sleep, and they took their meals below. 

There were at the date of their arrival thirty-nine sick men in 
the hospital, and six lay unburied in the dead-house. Two or 
three others died, and when they left, five or six weeks afterward, 
all had recovered, sufficiently at least to bear removal, save three 
whom they left convalescing. The young volunteer who had 
fastened his hope of life on their coming, had been able to be 
removed to his home, at Penn Yan, and they afterwards learned 
that he had entirely recovered his health. 

Under their reign, cleanliness, order, quiet, and comfortable food, 
had taken the place of the discomfort that previously existed. 
The sick were encouraged by sympathy, and stimulated by it, 
and though they had persisted in their efPort through great hard- 
ship, and even danger, for they were very near the enemy's lines, 
they felt themselves fully rewarded for all their toils and sacri- 
fices. 

During the month of January, their patients having nearly all 
recovered, Mrs. and Miss Gibbons, cheerfully obeyed a request to 
])roceed to Winchester, and take their places in the Seminary 
Hospital there. This hospital was at that time devoted to the 
worst cases of wounded. 

There were a large number of these in this place, most of 
them severely wounded, as has been said, and many of them 
dangerously so. The closest and most assiduous care was de- 
manded, and the ladies found themselves at once in a position to 



MRS. A. H. GIBBONS AND MISS .SARAH H. GIBBONS. 471 

tax all their strength and efforts. They were in this hospital 
over four months, and afterwards at Strasburg, where they were 
involved in the famous retreat from that place, when the enemy 
took possession, and held the hospital nurses, even, as prisoners, 
till the main body of their army was safely on the road that led 
to Dixie. 

Many instances of that retreat are of historical interest, but 
space forbids their repetition here. It is enough to state that 
these ladies heroically bore the discomfort of their position, and 
their own losses in stores and clothing, regretting only that it was 
out of their power to secure the comforts of the wounded, who 
were hurried from their quarters, jolted in ambulances in torture, 
or compelled to drag their feeble limbs along the encumbered 
road. 

After the retreat, and the subsequent abandonment of the Val- 
ley by the enemy, Mrs. Gibbons and her daughter returned for a 
short time to their home in New York. 

Their rest, however, was not long, for on the 19th of July, 
they arrived at Point Lookout, Maryland, where Hammond 
United States General Hospital was about to be opened. 

On the 20th, the day following, the first installment of patients 
arrived, two hundred and eighteen suffering and famished men 
from the rebel prison of Belle Isle. 

A fearful scene was presented on the arrival of these men. 
The transport on which they came was full of miserable-look- 
ing wretches, lying about the decks, many of them too feeble 
to walk, and unable to move without lielp. Not one of the two 
hundred and eighty, possessed more than one garment. Before 
leaving Belle Isle, they had been permitted to bathe. The filthy, 
vermin-infected garments, which had been their sole covering for 
many months, were in most cases thrown into the water, and the 
men had clothed themselves as best they could, in the scanty 
supply given them. Many were wrapped in sheets. A pair of 
trowsers was a luxury to which few attained. 



472 

They were mostly so feeble as to be carried on stretchers to 
the hospital. Mrs. Gibbons' first duty was to go on board the 
transport with food, wine and stimulants, to enable them to 
endure the removal ; and when once removed, and placed in their 
clean beds, or wards, there was sufficient employment in reducing 
all to order, and nursing them back to health. Many were hope- 
lessly broken down by their past sufferings, but most eventually 
recovered their strength. 

Mrs. and Miss Gibbons remained at Point Lookout fifteen 
months. After a short time Mrs. Gibbons finding her usefulness 
greatly impaired by being obliged to act under the authority of 
Miss Dix, who was officially at the head of all nurses, applied for, 
and received from Surgeon-General Hammond an independent 
appointment in this hospital, which gave her sole charge of it, 
apart from the medical supervision. In this appointment the 
Surgeon-General was sustained by the War Department. In her 
application Mrs. Gibbons was influenced by no antagonism to 
Miss Dix, but simply by her desire for the utmost usefulness. 

The military post of Point Lookout was at that time occupied 
by two Maryland Regiments, of whom Colonel Pogers had the 
command. If not in sympathy with rebellion, they undoubtedly 
were with slavery. Large numbers of contrabands had flocked 
thither, hoping to be protected in their longings for freedom. 
In this, however, they were disappointed. As soon as the Mary- 
land masters demanded the return of their absconding property, 
the Maryland soldiers were not only willing to accede to the 
demand, but to aid in enforcing it. 

Mrs. Gibbons found herself in a continual unpleasant conflict 
with the authorities. Sympathy, feeling, sense of justice, the 
principles of a life, were all on the side of the enslaved, and their 
attempt to escape. She worked for them, helped them to evade 
the demands of their former masters, and often sent them on their 
way toward the goal of their hopes and efforts, the mysterious 
North. 



MES. A. H. GIBBONS AND MISS SARAH H. GIBBONS. 473 

She endured persecutiouj received annoyances^ anonymous 
threats, and had much to bear, which was borne cheerfully for 
the sake of these oppressed ones. General Lockwood, then com- 
mander of the post, was always the friend of herself and her pro- 
teges, a man of great kindness of heart, and a lover of justice. 

As has been said, they remained at Point Lookout fifteen 
months. The summer following her introduction to the place, 
Mrs. Gibbons visited home, and after remaining but a short time 
returned to her duties. She had left all at home tranquil and 
serene, and did not dream of the hidden fires which were even 
then smouldering, and ready to burst into flame. 

She had not long returned before rumors of the riots in New 
York, the riots of July, 1863, reached Point Lookout. 

"If private houses are attacked, ours will be one of the first,'' 
said Miss Gibbons, on the reception of these tidings, and though 
her mother would not listen to the suggestion, she very well 
knew it was far from impossible. 

That night they retired full of apprehension, and had not 
fallen asleep when some one knocked at their door with the inti- 
mation that bad news had arrived for them. They asked if any 
one was dead, and on being assured that there was not, listened 
with comparative composure when they learned that their house 
in New York had been sacked by the mob, and most of its con- 
tents destroyed. 

The remainder of the night was spent in packing, and in the 
morning they started for home. 

It was a sad scene that presented itself on their arrival. There 
was not an unbroken pane of glass in any of the windows. The 
panels of the doors were many of them beaten in as with an axe. 
The furniture was mostly destroyed, bureaus, desks, closets, 
receptacles of all kinds had been broken open, and their contents 
stolen or rendered worthless; the carpets, soaked with a trampled 
conglomerate of mud and water, oil and filth, the debris left by 
the feet of the maddened, howling crowd, were entirely ruined; 



474 

beds and bedding, mirrors, and smaller articles had been carried 
away, the grand piano had had a fire kindled on the key-board, 
as had the sofas and chairs upon their velvet seats, fires that 
were, none knew how, extinguished. 

Over all were scattered torn books and valuable papers, the 
correspondence with the great minds of the country for years, 
trampled into the grease and filth, half burned and defaced. 
The relics of the precious only son, who had died a few years 
before — the beautiful memorial room, filled with pictures he had 
loved, beautiful vases, where flowers always bloomed; and a 
thousand tokens of the loved and lost, had shared the universal 
ruin. So had the writings and the clothing of the lamented 
father, Isaac T. Hopper — of all these priceless mementoes, there 
remained only the marble, life-size, bust of the son, which Mr. 
Gibbons had providentially removed to a place of safety, and a 
few minor objects. And all this ruin, and irreparable loss, had 
been visited upon this charitable and patriotic family, by a furi- 
ous, demoniac mob, because they loved Freedom, Justice, and 
their country. 

After this disaster the family were united beneath a hired roof 
for some time, while their own house was repaired, and the frag- 
ments of its scattered plenishing, and abundant treasures, were 
gathered together and reclaimed. 

Mrs. Gibbons returned for a brief space to Point Lookout, 
where her purpose was to instal the Misses Woolsey, and then 
leave them in charge of the hospital. 

Circumstances, however, prevented her from leaving the Point 
for a much longer period than she had intended to stay, and when 
she did leave, she was accompanied by the Misses Woolsey, and 
the whole party returned to New York together. 

We have no record of the further army work of Mrs. and Miss 
Gibbons until the opening of the grand campaign of the Army 
of the Potomac, the following May. 

Innnediately after the battle of the Wilderness, Mrs. Gibbons 



MRS. A. H. GIBBONS AND MTSS SARAH H. GIBBONS. 475 

received a telegram desiring her to come to the aid of the 
wounded. She resolved at once to go, and urged her daughter 
to accompany her, as she had always done before. Miss Gibbons 
had, in the meantime, married, and in the course of a few weeks 
become a widow. She felt reluctant to return to the work she 
had so loved, but her mother's wish prevailed. The next day 
they started, and in a very short space of time found themselves 
amidst the horrible confusion and suffering which prevailed at 
Belle Plain. 

Their stay there was but brief, and in a short time they were 
themselves established at Fredericksburg. There Mrs. Gibbons 
was requested to take charge of a hospital, or rather a large 
unfurnished building, which was to be used as one. In great 
haste straw was found to fill the empty bed-sacks, which Were 
placed upon the floor, and the means to feed the suffering mass 
who were expected. The men, in all the forms of suffering, were 
placed upon these beds, and cared for as well as they could be, 
as fast as they arrived, and Mrs. Emerson prepared food for 
them, standing unsheltered in rain or sultry heat. 

For weeks they toiled thus. One day when the town was 
beautiful and fragrant with the early roses, some regiments of 
IS^orthern soldiers landed and marched through the town, on their 
way to the front. The patriotic women gathered there, cheered 
them as they marched on, and gathered roses which they offered 
in a fragrant shower, with which the men decorated caps and 
button-holes. They passed on ; but two days later the long train 
of ambulances crept down the hill, bringing back these heroes to 
their pitying countrywomen, the roses withering on their breasts, 
and dyed with their sacred patriot blood. 

Through all the horrors of this sad campaign, Mrs. Gibbons 
and Mrs. Emerson remained, doing whatever their hands could 
find to do. When Fredericksburg was evacuated, they accom- 
panied the soldiers, riding in the open box-cars, and on the way 
administering to them as they could. 



476 

They were for a time at White House, where thousands of 
wounded required and received their aid, and afterwards at City 
Point, where they remained for several weeks in charge of the 
hospital of the Second Division, being from first to last, among 
the most useful of the many noble women who were engaged in 
this work. 

After their return home, Mrs. Gibbons accepted an appoint- 
ment at the hospital in Beverly, New Jersey, where she had 
charge under Dr. Wagner, the excellent surgeon she had known, 
and to whom she had become much attached, at Point Lookout. 
As usual, Mrs. Emerson accompanied her to this place, and lent 
her, efforts to the great work to which both had devoted them- 
selves. 

There were about nineteen hundred patients in this hospital, 
and the duties were arduous. They boarded with the family of 
Dr. Wagner, adjacent to the hospital, and after the labors of the 
day were mostly finished, they went there to dine, at seven o'clock. 
Often, despite pleasant conversation, and attractive viands, the 
sense of fatigue, before unfelt, would attack Mrs. Gibbons, and at 
the table she would fall asleep. But the morning would find her 
with strength restored, and ready for the toil of the coming day. 

The winter of 1865 will long be remembered in New York for 
the ravages of small-pox in that city. The victims were not con- 
fined to any class, or locality, and there were perhaps as many in 
the homes of wealth, as in the squalid dwelling-places of the poor. 

Mrs. Gibbons was suddenly summoned home to nurse her 
youngest daughter, in an attack of varioloid. This was accom- 
plished, and the young lady recovered. But this closed the army 
labors of the mother. She did not return, though Mrs. Emerson 
remained till the close of the hospital the following spring, when 
the end of the war rendered their further services in this work 
unnecessary, and they once more found themselves settled in the 
quiet of home. 



MRS. E. J. RUSSELL 




E have spoken in previous sketches of the faithfulness 
and devotion of many of the government nurses, ap- 
pointed by Miss Dix. 'No salary, certainly not the 
meagre pittance doled out by the government could 
compensate for such services, and the only satisfactory reason 
which can be offered for their willingness to render them, is that 
their hearts were inspired by a patriotism equally ardent with 
that which actuated their wealthier sisters, and that this pitiful 
salary, hardly that accorded to a green Irish girl just arrived in 
this country from the bogs of Erin, was accepted rather as 
affording them the opportunity to engage more readily in their 
work, than from any other cause. In many instances it was 
expended in procuring necessary food or luxuries for their soldier- 
patients, and in others, served to prevent dependence upon friends, 
who had the disposition but perhaps hardly the ability to furnish 
these heroic and self-denying nurses with the clothing or pocket- 
money they needed in their work. 

It is of one of these nurses, a lady of mature age, a widow, that 
we have now to speak. Mrs. E. J. Russell, of Plattekill, Ulster 
County, New York, was at the commencement of the war engaged 
in teaching in New York city. In common with the other ladies 
of the Reformed Dutch Church, in Ninth Street, of which she 
was a member, she worked for the soldiers at every spare moment, 
but the cause seemed to her to need her personal services in the 
hospital, and in ministrations to the wounded o sick, and when 

477 



478 woMAN^s woEK i:n" the civil war. 

the call came for nurses, she waited upon Miss Dix, was accepted, 
and sent first to the Regimental Hospital of the Twentieth New 
York Militia, National Guard, then stationed at Annapolis Junc- 
tion. On arriving there she found that the regiment consisted 
of men from her own county, her former neighbors and acquaint- 
ances. The regiment was soon after ordered to Baltimore, and 
being in the three months' service, was mustered out soon after, 
and Mrs. Eussell was assigned by Miss Dix to Columbia College 
Hospital, Washington. Here she remained in the quiet discharge 
of her duties, until June, 1864, not without many trials and dis- 
comforts, for the position of the hired nurse in these liospitals 
about Washington, was often rendered very uncomfortable by the 
discourtesy of the young assistant surgeons. Her devotion to her 
duties had been so intense that her health was seriously impaired, 
and she resigned, but after a short period of rest, her strength 
was sufficiently recruited for her to resume her labors, and she 
reported for duty at West Building Hospital, Baltimore, where 
she remained until after Lee's surrender. She was in the service 
altogether four years, lacking eighteen days. During this time 
nine hundred and eighty-five men were under her care, for vary- 
ing periods from a few days to thirteen months; of these ninety 
died, and she closed the eyes of seventy-six of them. Her ser- 
vice in Baltimore was in part among our returned prisoners, from 
Belle Isle, Libby and other prisons, and in part among the 
wounded rebel prisoners. 

Many of the incidents which Mrs. Russell relates of the 
wounded who passed under her care are very touching. Many 
of lier earlier patients were in the delirium of typhoid fever, and 
her ears and heart were often pained in hearing their piteous calls 
for their loved ones to come to them, — to forgive them — or to 
help them. Often had she occasion to offer the consolations of 
religion to those who were evidently nearing the river of death, 
and sometimes she was made happy in finding that those who 
were suffering terribly from racking pain, or the agony of wounds, 



MKS. E. J. RUSSELL. 479 

were comforted and cheered by her efforts to bring them to think 
of the Saviour. One of these, suffering from an intense fever, as 
she seated herself by the side of his cot, and asked him in her 
quiet gentle way, if he loved Jesus as his Saviour, clasped her 
hand in his and folding it to his heart, asked so earnestly, ^^Do 
you love Jesus too? Oh, yes, I love him. I do not fear to die, 
for then I shall join my dear mother who taught me to love him." 
He then repeated with great distinctness a stanza of the hymn, 
''Jesus can make a dying bed," etc., and inquired if she could 
sing. She could not, but she read several hymns to him. His 
joy and peace made him apparently oblivious of his suffering 
from the fever, and he endeavored as well as his failing strength 
would permit, to tell her of his hopes of immortality, and to com- 
mend to her prayers his only and orphaned sister. 

Another, a poor fellow from Maine, dying of diphtheria, asked 
her to pray for him and to read to him from the Bible. She com- 
mended him tenderly to the Good Shepherd, and soon had the 
happiness of seeing, even amid his sufferings, that his face was 
radiant with joy. He selected a chapter of the Bible which he 
wished her to read, and then sent messages by her to his mother 
and friends, uttering the words with great difficulty, but passing 
away evidently in perfect peace. 

Since the war, Mrs. Russell has resumed her profession as a 
teacher at Newburgh, New York. 



MRS. MARY W. LEE. 




T is somewhat remarkable that a considerable number 
of the most faithful and active Avorkers in the hospitals 
and in other labors for the soldier during the late war, 
should have been of foreign birth. Their patriotism 
and benevolence was fully equal to that of our women born under 
the banner of the stars, and their joy at the final triumph of our 
arms was as fervent and hearty. Our readers will recall among 
these noble women, Miss Wormeley, Miss Clara Davis, Miss 
Jessie Home, Mrs. General Ricketts, Mrs. General Turchin, 
Bridget Divers, and others. 

Among the natives of a foreign land, but thoroughly American 
in every fibre of her being, Mrs. Mary W. Lee stands among the 
foremost of the earnest persistent toilers of the great army of 
philanthropists. She was born in the north of Ireland, of Scotch 
parentage, but came with her parents to the United States when 
she was five years of age, and has ever since made Philadelphia 
her home. Here she married Mr. Lee, a gold refiner, and a man 
of great moral worth. An interesting family had grown up 
around them, all, like their parents thoroughly patriotic. One 
son enlisted early in the war, first, we believe, in the Pennsyl- 
vania Reserve Corps, and afterward in the Seventy-second Penn- 
sylvania Volunteers, and served throughout the war, and though 
often in peril, escaped any" severe wounds. A daughter, Miss 
Amanda Lee, imbued with her mother's spirit, accompanied her 

480 



MRS. MARY W. LEE. 481 

in most of her labors, and emulated her example of active use- 
fulness. 

Mrs. Lee was one of the noble band of women whose hearts 
were moved with the desire to do something for our soldiers, 
when they were first hastening to the war in April, 1861, and in 
the organization of the Volunteer Refreshment Saloon at Phila- 
delphia, an institution which fed, during the war, four hundred 
thousand of our soldiers as they passed to and from the battle- 
fields, and brought comfort and solace to many thousands of the 
sick and wounded, she was one of the most active and faithful 
members of its committee. The regiments often arrived at mid- 
night ; but whatever the hour, whether night or day, at the firing 
of the signal gun, which announced that troops were on their 
way to Philadelphia, Mrs. Lee and her co-workers hastened to 
the Union Volunteer Refreshment Saloon, near the Navy Yard, 
£tnd prepared an ample repast for the soldiers, caring at the same 
time for any sick or wounded among them. No previous fatigue 
or weariness, no inclemency of the weather, or darkness of the 
night was regarded by these heroic women as a valid excuse from 
these self-imposed duties or rather this glorious privilege, for so 
they deemed it, of ministering to the comfort of the defenders of 
the Union. And through the whole four and a-third years dur- 
ing which troops passed through Philadelphia, no regiment or 
company ever passed unfed. The supplies as well as the patience 
and perseverance of the women held out to the end, and scores 
of thousands who but for their voluntary labors and beneficence 
must have suffered severely from hunger, had occasion to bless 
God for the philanthropy and practical benevolence of the women 
of Philadelphia. 

But this field of labor, broad as it was, did not fully satisfy the 
patriotic ardor of Mrs. Lee. She had heard of the sufferings and 
privations endured by our soldiers at the front, and in hospitals 
remote from the cities ; and she longed to go and minister to their 
wants. Fortunately, she could be spared for a time at least from 

61 



482 woman's work in the civil war. 

her home. Though of middle age, she possessed a vigorous con- 
stitution, capable of enduring all necessary hardships, and was in 
full health and strength. She was well known as a skilful cook, 
an admirable nurse, and an excellent manager of household affairs. 
The sickness of some members of her family delayed her for a 
time, but when this obstacle was removed, she felt that she could 
not longer be detained from her chosen work. It was July, 1862, 
the period when the Army of the Potomac exhausted by its 
wearisome march and fearful battles of the seven days, lay almost 
helpless at Harrison's Landing. The sick poisoned by the ma- 
laria of the Ghickahominy Swamps, and the wounded, shattered 
and maimed wrecks of humanity from the great battles, were 
being sent off by thousands to the hospitals of Washington, Bal- 
timore, Philadelphia, New York, and New England, and yet 
other thousands lay in the wretched field hospitals around the 
Landing, Avith but scant care, and in utter wretchedness and 
misery. The S. R. Spaulding, one of the steamers assigned to 
the United States Sanitary Commission for its Hospital Trans- 
port Service, had brought to Philadelphia a heavy cargo of the 
sick and wounded, and was about to return for another, when 
Mrs. Lee, supplied Avith stores by the Union Volunteer Refresh- 
ment Committee, and her personal friends, embarked upon it for 
Harrison's Landing, where she was to be associated with Mrs. 
John Harris in caring for the soldiers. The Spaulding arrived 
in due time in the James River, and lay off in the stream while 
the Ruflfin house was burning. On landing, Mrs. Lee found 
Mrs. Harris, and the Rev. Isaac O. Sloan, one of the Agents of 
the Christian Commission ready to welcome her to the toilsome 
duties that were before her. Wretched indeed was the condition 
of the poor sick men, lying in mildewed, leaky tents without 
floors, and the pasty tenacious mud ankle deep around them, the 
raging thirst and burning fever of the marshes consuming them, 
with only the warm and impure river water to drink, and little 
even of this; with but a small supply of medicines, and no food 



MRS. MARY W. LEE. 483 

or delicacies suitable for the sick^ the bean soup, unctuous with 
rancid pork fat, forming the principal article of low diet; uncheered 
by kind words or tender sympathy, it is hardly matter of surprise 
that hundreds of as gallant men as ever entered the army died 
here daily. 

The supplies of the Sanitary and Christian Commissions, and 
those sent to Mrs. Harris and Mrs. Lee, from the Ladies' Aid 
Society, and the Union Volunteer Refreshment Committee, ad- 
ministered by such skilful nurses as Mrs. Harris and Mrs. Lee, 
Mrs. Fales, Mrs. Husband, and Miss Hall, soon changed the as- 
pect of affairs, and though the malarial fever still raged, there 
was a better chance of recovery from it, and the sick men were 
as rapidly as possible transferred to a better climate, and a health- 
ier atmosphere. In the latter part of August, the Army of the 
Potomac having left the James River for Acquia Creek and 
Alexandria, Mrs. Lee returned home for a brief visit. 

On the 5th of September, she started for Washington, to enter 
again upon her chosen work. Finding that the Army were just 
about moving into Maryland, she spent a few days in the Hos- 
pital of the Epiphany at Washington, nursing the sick and 
wounded there ; but learning that the Army of the Potomac were 
in hot pursuit of the Rebel Army, and that a severe battle was 
impending, she could not rest; she determined to be near the 
troops, so that when the battle came, she might be able to render 
prompt assistance to the wounded. It was almost impossible to 
obtain transportation, the demand for the movement of sustenance 
and ammunition for the army filling every wagon, and still prov- 
ing insufficient for their wants ; but by the kind permission of 
Captain Gleason of the Seventy-first Pennsylvania Volunteers, 
she was permitted to follow with her stores in a forage wagon, 
and arrived at the rear of the army the night before the battle of 
Antietam. The battle commenced with the dawn on the 17th 
of September, and during its progress, she was stationed on the 
Sharpsburg road, where she had her supplies and two large tubs 



484 woman's woek in the civil war. 

of water, one to bathe and bind up the wounds of those who had 
fallen in the fight, and the other to refresh them when suffering 
from the terrible thirst which gun-shot wounds always produce. 
As the hours drew on, the contents of one assumed a deeper and 
yet deeper crimson hue and the seemingly ample supply of the 
other grew less and less. Her supply of soft bread had given 
out, and she had bought of an enterprising sutler who had pushed 
his way to a place of danger in the hope of gain, at ten and 
twenty cents a loaf, till her money was nearly exhausted ; but to 
the honor of this sutler, it should be said, that the noble example 
of Mrs. Lee, in seeking to alleviate the sufferings of the wounded 
so moved his feelings, that he exclaimed, " Great God ! I can't 
stand this any longer ; Take this bread, and give it to that wo- 
man," (Mrs. Lee), and forgetting for the time the greed of gain 
which had brought him thither, he lent a helping hand most zeal- 
ously to the care of the wounded. During the day. General Mc 
Clellan's head-quarters were at Boonsboro', and his aids were 
constantly passing back and forth over the Sharpsburg road, near 
which Mrs. Lee had her station. 

The battle closed with the night-fall, and Mrs. Lee imme- 
diately went into the Sedgwick Division Hospital, where were 
five hundred severely wounded men, and among the number, 
Major-General Sedgwick. Here she commenced preparing food 
for the wounded, but was greatly annoyed by a gang of villain- 
ous camp followers, who hung around her fires and stole every- 
thing from them if she was engaged for a moment. At last she 
entered the hospital, and inquired if there was any officer there 
who had the authority to order her a guard. General Sedgwick 
immediately responded to her request, by authorizing her to call 
upon the first soldier she could find for the purpose, and she had 
no further annoyance. 

She remained for several days at this hospital, doing all she 
could with the means at her command, to make the condition of 
the wounded comfortable, but on the arrival of Mrs. Arabella 



MRS. MARY W. LEE. 485 

Barlow, whose husband, then Colonel, afterward Major-General 
Barlow, was very severely wounded, she gave up the charge of 
this hospital to her, and went to the Hoffman Farm's Hospital, 
where there were over a thousand of the worst cases. Here she 
was the only lady for several weeks, until the hospital was re- 
moved to Smoketown, where she was joined by Miss M. M. C. 
Hall, Mrs. Husband, Mrs. Harris, and Miss Tyson, of Baltimore. 
She remained at Smoketown General Hospital, nearly three 
months. The worst cases, those which could not bear removal 
to Washington, Baltimore, or Philadelphia, were collected in this 
hospital, and there was much suffering and many deaths in it. 

Mrs. Lee returned home on the 14th of December, 1862, and 
on the 29th of the same month, she again set out for the front, 
arriving safely at Falmouth on the 31st, where the wounded of 
Fredericksburg were gatli:ered by thousands. After four weeks 
of earnest labor here, she again returned home, but early in 
March, she was again at the front, in the Hospital of the Second 
Corps, which had been removed from Falmouth to Potomac 
Creek. She continued in this Hospital until the battle of Chan- 
cellorsville, when she went up to the Lacy House, at Falmouth, 
to assist Mrs. Harris and Mrs. Beck. She accompanied Mrs. 
Harris, and several of the gentlemen of the Christian Commission 
in an Ambulance to take nourishment to the wounded of General 
Sedgwick's command, and witnessed the taking of Marye's 
Heights, the balls from the batteries passing over the heads of 
her company. Her anxiety in regard to this conflict was height- 
ened by the fact that her son was in one of the regiments which 
made the charge upon the Heights, and great was her gratitude in 
finding that he was not among the wounded. 

After the wounded were sent to Washington she returned to 
Potomac Creek, where she remained until Lee's second invasion 
of Maryland and Pennsylvania, when she moved with the army 
as far as Fairfax Court-House, enduring many hardships. From 
Fairfax Court-House she went to Alexandria to await the result 



486 

of the movement, and after some delay returned home. The 
battle of Gettysburg called her again into the field. Arriving 
several days after the battle, she went directly to the Second 
Corps Hospital, and labored there until it was broken up. For 
her services in this hospital she received from the officers and 
men a gold medal — a trefoil, beautifully engraved, and with an 
appropriate inscription. She went next to Camp Letterman Gen- 
eral Hospital, where she remained for some weeks, her stay at 
Gettysburg being in all about two months. Her health was im- 
paired by her excessive labors at Gettysburg and previously in 
Virginia, and she remained at home for a longer time than usual, 
giving her attention, however, meanwhile to the Volunteer Re- 
freshment Saloon, but early in February, 1864, she established 
herself in a new hospital of the Second Division, Second Corps, 
at Brandy Station, Virginia. Here, soon after, her daughter 
joined her, and the old routine of the hospital at Potomac Creek 
was soon established. Mrs. Lee has the faculty of making the 
most of her conveniences and supplies. Her daughter writing 
home from this hospital thus describes the furniture of her 
•^Special Diet Kitchen:" — ^^ Mother has a small stove; until this 
morning it has smoked very much, but it is now doing very well. 
The top is about half a yard square. On this she is now boiling 
potatoes, stewing some chicken-broth, heating a kettle of water, 
and has a large bread-|)udding inside. She has made milk-punch, 
lemonade, beef-tea, stewed cranberries, and I cannot think what 
else since breakfast." With all this intense activity the spiritual 
interests of her patients were not forgotten. Mrs. Lee is a woman 
of deep and unaffected piety, and her tact in speaking a word in 
season, and in bringing the men under religious influences was 
remarkable. This hospital soon became remarkable for its order, 
neatness and cheerfulness. 

The order of General Grant on the 15th of April, 1864, for 
the removal of all civilians from the army, releastd Mrs. Lee and 
Mrs. Husband, who had been associated with her, from their 



MRS. MARY W. LEE. 487 

duties at Brandy Station. But in less than a month both were 
recalled to the temporary base of the army at Belle Plain and 
Fredericksburg, to minister to the thousands of wounded from the 
destructive battles of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania. At 
Fredericksburg, where the whole town was one vast hospital, the 
surgeon in charge entrusted her with the care of the special diet 
of the Second Corps' hospitals. Unsupplied with kitchen furni- 
ture, and the surgeon being entirely at a loss how to procure any, 
her w^oman's wit enabled her to improvise the means of perform- 
ing her duties. She remembered that Mrs. Harris had left at the 
Lacy House in Falmouth, opposite Fredericksburg, the year 
before, an old'stove which might be there yet. Procuring an am- 
bulance, she crossed the river, and found the old stove, much the 
worse for wear, and some kettles and other utensils, all of which 
were carefully transported to the other side, and after diligent 
scouring, the whole were soon in such a condition that boiling, 
baking, stewing and frying could proceed simultaneously, and 
during her stay in Fredericksburg, the old stove was kept con- 
stantly hot, and her skilful hands were employed from morning 
till night and often from night till morning again in the prepara- 
tion of food and delicacies for the sick. Nothing but her iron 
constitution enabled her to endure this incessant labor. 

From Fredericksburg she went over land to White House and 
there, aided by Miss Cornelia Hancock, her ministrations to the 
wounded were renewed. Thence soon after they removed to City 
Point. Here for months she labored amid such suffering and 
distress that the angels must have looked down in pity upon the 
accumulated human woe which met their sympathizing eyes. 
Brave, noble-hearted men fell by hundreds and thousands, and 
died not knowing whether their sacrifices would be sufficient to 
save their country. At length wearied with her intense and pro- 
tracted labors, Mrs. Lee found herself compelled to visit home 
and rest for a time. But her heart was in the work, and again 
she returned to it, and was in charge of a hospital near Petersburg 



488 

at the time of Lee^s surrender. She remained in the hospitals 
of Petersburg and Richmond^ until the middle of May, and then 
returned to her quiet home, participating to the very last in the 
closing work of the Volunteer Refreshment Saloon, where she 
had commenced her labors for the soldiers. Other ladies may 
have engaged in more extended enterprises, may have had charge 
of larger hospitals, or undertaken more comprehensive and far- 
reaching plans for usefulness to the soldier — but in untiring devo- 
tion to his interests, in faithfully performed, though often irksome 
labor, carried forward patiently and perseveringly for more than 
four years, Mrs. Lee has a record not surpassed in the history of 
the deeds of American women. 



MISS CORNELIA M. TOMPKINS 




ISS COENELIA M. TOMPKINS, of Niagara Falls, 
was one of the truly heroic spirits evoked by the war. 
Belated to a distinguished family of the same name, 
educated, accustomed to the refinements and social en- 
joyments of a Christian home she left all to become a hospital 
nurse, and to aid in saving the lives of the heroes and defenders 
of her native land. Recommended by her friend, the late Mar- 
garet Breckinridge, of whom a biographical notice is given in this 
volume, she came to St. Louis in the summer of 1863, was com- 
missioned as a nurse by Mr. Yeatman, and assigned to duty at 
the Benton Barracks Hospital, under the superintendence of Miss 
Emily E. Parsons, and the general direction of Surgeon Ira 
Bussell. In this service she was one of the faithful band of 
nurses, who, with Miss Parsons, brought the system of nursing 
to such perfection at that hospital. 

In the fall of that year she was transferred to the hospital ser- 
vice at Memphis, by Mr. Yeatman, to meet the great demand for 
nurses there, where she became favorably known as a most judi- 
cious and skilful nurse. 

In the spring of 1864 she returned to St. Louis, and was again 
assigned to duty at Benton Barracks, where she remained till 
mid-summer, when having been from home a year, she obtained 
a furlough, and went home for a short period of rest, and to visit 
her family. 

On her return to St. Louis she was assigned to duty at the 

62 489 



490 woman's work in the civil war. 

large hospital at Jefferson Barracks, and continued there till the 
end of the war, doing faithful and excellent service, and receiving 
the cordial approbation of the surgeons in charge, and the Western 
Sanitary Commission, as well as the gratitude of the sick and 
wounded soldiers, to whom she was a devoted friend and a minis- 
tering angel in their sorrows and distress. 

In her return to the quiet and enjoyment of her own home, 
within the sound of the great cataract, she has carried with her 
the consciousness of having rendered a most useful service to the 
patriotic and heroic defenders of her country, in their time of 
suffering and need, the approval of a good conscience aud the 
smile of heaven upon her noble and heroic soul. 



MRS. ANNA C. McMEENS 




KS. ANNA C. McMEENS, of Sandusky, Ohio, was 
born in Maryland, but removed to the northern part 
of Ohio, in company with her parents wlien quite 
young. She is therefore a western woman in her 
habits, associations and feelings, while her patriotism and phi- 
lanthropy are not bounded by sectional lines. Her husband, 
Dr. McMeens, was appointed surgeon to an Ohio regiment, which 
was one of the first raised when Mr. Lincoln called for troops, 
after the firing upon Sumter. In the line of his duty he pro- 
ceeded to Camp Dennison, where he had for some time principal 
charge of the medical department. Mrs. McMeens resolved to 
accompany her husband, and share in the hardships of the cam- 
paign, for the purpose of doing good where she could find it to 
do. She was therefore one of the first, — if not the first woman 
in Ohio, to give her exclusive, undivided time in a military hos- 
pital, in administering to the necessities of the soldiers. When 
the regiment left Camp Dennison, she accompanied it, until our 
forces occupied Nashville. Dr. McMeens then had a hospital 
placed under his charge, and his faithful wife assisted as nurse 
for several months, contributing greatly to the efficiency of the 
nursing department, and to the administration of consolation and 
comfort in many ways to our sick soldier boys, who were neces- 
sarily deprived of the comforts of home. Subsequently at the 
battle of Perry ville, Mrs. McMeens' husband lost his life from 
excessive exertions while in attention to the sick and Avounded. 

491 



492 

Being deprived of her natural protectorj she returned to her 
home in Sandusky, which was made desolate by an additional 
sacrifice to the demon of secession. While at home, not content 
to sit idle in her mourning for her husband, she was busily occu- 
pied in aiding the Sanitary Commission in obtaining supplies, of 
which she so well knew the value by her familiarity with the 
w^ants of the soldiers in field, camp and hospitals. She however 
very soon felt it her duty to participate more actively in imme- 
diate attentions upon the sick and wounded soldiers. A fine field 
offered itself in the hospitals at Washington, to which place she 
w^ent ; and remained nearly one year in attention, and rendering 
assistance daily among the various hospitals of the Nation's cap- 
ital. It would be feeble praise to say that her duties were per- 
formed in the most energetic and judicious manner. Few women 
have made greater sacrifices in the war than the subject of our 
sketch ; none have been made from a purer sense of duty, or a 
fuller knowledge of the magnitude of the cause in which we have 
been engaged. 

At present the necessity for attention to soldiers has happily 
ceased, and we find her busily engaged in missionary work among 
the sailors, which she has an excellent opportunity of performing 
while at her beautiful summer home on the island of Gibraltar, 
Lake Erie. 



MRS. JERUSHA R. SMALL. 




HIS young lady was one of the martyrs of the Avar. 
She resided in Cascade, Dubuque County, Iowa, and 
just previous to the commencement of the Avar had 
buried her only child, a sweet little girl of four years. 
When volunteers Avere called for from Iowa, her husband, Mr. 
J. E. Small, felt it his duty to take up arms for his country, and 
as his Avife had no home ties she determined to go Avith him and 
make herself useful in caring for the sick and wounded of his 
regiment, or of other regiments in the same division. She proved 
a most excellent nurse, and for months labored with untiring 
energy in the regimental hospitals, and to hundreds of the 
Avounded from Belmont, Donelson, and Shiloh, as Avell as to the 
numerous sick soldiers of General Grant's army she AA^as an angel 
of mercy. Her constant care and devotion had considerably 
impaired her health before the battle of Shiloh. 

At this battle her husband was badly Avounded and taken pri- 
soner, but was retaken by the Union troops. In the course of 
the battle, the tent Avhich she occupied and where she Avas minis- 
tering to the wounded came within range of the enemy's shells, 
and she with her wounded husband and a large number of other 
Avounded soldiers, Avere obliged to fly for their lives, leaving all 
their goods behind them. Previous to her flight, hoAvever, she had 
torn up all her spare clothing and dresses to make bandages and 
compresses and pilloAvs for the Avounded soldiers. She found her 
way Avith her Avounded patients to one of the hospitals exteiiipo- 

493 



494 WO>fAN's WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR. 

rizecl by the Cincinnati ladies. Her husband and many of his 
comrades of the Twelfth Iowa Regiment were among this com- 
pany of wounded men. She craved admission for them and 
remained to nurse her husband and the others for several weeks, 
but Avhen her husband became convalescent, she was compelled 
to take to her bed; her fatigue and exposure, acting upon a 
somewhat frail and delicate constitution had brought on galloping 
consumption. She soon learned from her physician that there 
was no hope of her recovery, and then the desire to return home 
and die in her mother's arms seemed to take entire possession of 
her soul. Permission was obtained for her to go, and for her 
husband to accompany her, and when she was removed from the 
boat to the cars, Mrs. Dr. Mendenhall of the Cincinnati Branch 
of the Sanitary Commission accompanied her to the cars, and 
having provided for her comfortable journey, gave her a parting 
kiss. Mrs. Small was deeply affected by this kindness of a 
stranger, and thanking her for her attention to herself and hus- 
band, expressed the hope that they should meet in a better world. 
A lady, who evidently had little sympathy with the war or with 
those who sought to alleviate the sufferings of the soldiers, stepped 
up and said to Mrs. Small; "You did very wrong to go and 
expose yourself as you have done when you were so young and 
frail.'' "No!" replied the dying woman, "I feel that I have 
done right, I think I have been the means of saving some lives, 
and that of my dear husband among the rest; and these I con- 
sider of far more vakie than mine, for now they can go and help 
our country in its hour of need." 

JNIrs. Small lived to reach home, but died a few days after her 
arrival. She requested that her dead body might be wrapped in 
the national flag, for next to her husband and her God, she loved 
the country which it represented, best. She was buried with 
military honors, a considerable number of the soldiers of the 
Twelfth Iowa who were home on furlough, taking part in the 
sad procession. 



MRS. S. A. MARTHA CANFIELD 




HIS lady was the wife of Colonel Herman Canfield, of 
the Seventy-first Ohio Regiment. She accompanied 
her husband to the field, and devoted herself to the 
care and succor of the sick and wounded soldiers, until 
the battle of Shiloh, where her husband was mortally wounded, 
and survived but a few hours. She returned home with his body 
and remained for a short time, but feeling that it was in her 
power to do something for the cause to which her husband had 
given his life, she returned to the Army of the MississijDpi and 
became attached to the Sixteenth Army Corps, and spent most 
of her time in the hospitals of Memphis and its vicinity. But 
though she accomplished great good for the soldiers, she took a 
deep interest also in the orphans of the freedmen in that region, 
and by her extensive acquaintance and influence with the mili- 
tary authorities, she succeeded in establishing and putting upon a 
satisfactory basis, the Colored Orphan Asylum in Memphis. 
She devoted her whole time until the close of the war to these 
two objects; the welfare of the soldiers in the hospitals and the 
perfecting of the Orphan Asylum, and not only gave her time 
but very largely also of her property to the furthering of these 
objects. The army officers of that large and efficient army corps 
bear ample testimony to her great usefulness and devotion. 

495 



MRS. E. THOMAS, AND MISS MORRIS 




^^ HESE two ladies, sisters, volunteered as unpaid nurses 
for the War, from Cincinnati. They commenced their 
duties at the first opening of the Hospitals, and re- 
mained faithful to their calling, until the hospitals were 
closed, after the termination of the war. In cold or heat, under 
all circumstances of privation, and often when all the other 
nurses were stricken down with illness, they never faltered in 
their work, and, although not wealthy, gave freely of their own 
means to secure any needed comfort for the soldiers. Mrs. Men- 
denhall, of Cincinnati, who knew their abundant labors, speaks 
of them as unsurpassed in the extent and continuousness of their 
sacrifices. 

496 ' ' 



MRS. SHEPARD WELLS 




HIS lady, the wife of Rev. Shepard Wells, was, with 
her husband, driven from East Tennessee by the rebel- 
lion, because of their loyalty to the Union. They found 
their way to St. Louis at an early period of the War, 
where he entered into the work of the Christian Commission for 
the Union soldiers, and she became a member of the Ladies' 
Union Aid Society, of St. Louis, and gave herself wholly to 
sanitary labors for the sick and wounded in the Hospitals of that 
city, acting also as one of the Secretaries of the Society, and as 
its agent in many of its works of benevolence, superintending at 
one time the Special Diet Kitchen, established by the Society at 
Benton Barracks, and doing an amount of work which few wo- 
men could endure, animated and sustained by a genuine love of 
doing good, by noble and Christian purposes, and by true patri- 
otism and philanthropy. 

The incidents of the persecutions endured by Mr. and Mrs, 
Wells, in East Tennessee, and of her life and labors among the 
sick and wounded of the Union army, would add very much to 
the interest of this brief notice, but the particulars are not suffi- 
ciently familiar to the writer to be narrated by him, and he can 
only record the impressions he received of her remarkable faith- 
fulness and efficiency, and her high Christian motives, in the la- 
bors she performed in connection with the Ladies' Union Aid 
Society, of St. Louis, — that noble Society of heroic women who, 
during the whole war, performed an amount of sanitary, hospital 
63 49r 



498 

and philanthropic work for the soldiers, the refugees and the 
freedmen, second only to the Western Sanitary Commission itself, 
of which it was a most faithful ally and co-worker. 

United with an earnest Christian faith, Mrs. Wells possessed a 
kind and generous sympathy with suffering, and a patriotic ardor 
for the welfare of the Union soldiers, so that she was never more 
in her element than when laboring for the poor refugees, for the 
families of those brave men who left their all to fight for their 
country, for the sick and wounded in the hospitals, and for the 
freedmen and their families. The labors she performed extended 
to all these objects of sympathy and charity, and, from the be- 
ginning to the end of her service, she never seemed weary in 
well-doing ; and there can be no doubt that when her work on 
earth is finished, and she passes onward to the heavenly life, she 
will hear the approving voice of her Saviour, saying, ^^ Well done, 
good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.^' 



MRS. E. C. WITHERELL. 




N the month of December, 1861 , on a visit made by 
the writer to the Fourth Street Hospital, in St. Louis, 
he was particularly impressed with the great devotion 
of one of the female nurses to her sick patients. At 
the conclusion of a religious service held there, as he passed 
through the wards to call on those who had been too ill to attend 
worship, he found her seated by the bed-side of a sick soldier, 
suffering from pneumonia, on w^hose pale, thin face the marks of 
approaching dissolution were plainly visible. She held in her 
hand a copy of the New Testament, from which she had been 
reading to him, in a cheerful and hopeful manner, and a little 
book of prayers, hymns and songs from which she had been sing- 
ing, " There is rest for the weary,^' and " The Shining Shore.^^ 
The soldier's bed w^as neatly made; his special diet had been 
given ; his head rested easily on his pillow ; and his countenance 
beamed with a sweet and pleasant smile. It was evident the 
patient enjoyed the kind attentions, the conversation, the reading 
and singing of his faithful nurse. The lady who sat by his bed- 
side was of middle age, having a countenance expressive of good- 
ness, benevolence, purity of motive, intelligence and affection. 
It was plain that she regarded her patient with a tender care, and 
that her influence calmed and soothed his spirit. Her name was 
Mrs. E. C. Witherell, and the sick soldier was a mere boy, who 
had shouldered his musket to fight for the cause of the Union, 
and had contracted his fatal disease in the marches and the 

499 



500 woman's work i:n" the civit. war. 

exposure of the army in Missouri, and was now about to die 
away from friends and home. The interest felt by Mrs. With- 
erell in this soldier boy, was motherly, full of affection and sym- 
pathy, and creditable to her noble and generous heart. As I 
drew near and introduced myself as a chaplain, she welcomed 
me, introduced me to the patient, and we sat down and conversed 
together ; the young man was in a state of peaceful resignation ; 
was willing to die for his country ; and only regretted that he 
could not see his mother and sisters again ; but he said that Mrs. 
Witherell had been as a mother to him, and if he could have 
hold of her hand he should not be afraid to die. He even hoped 
that with her kind care and nursing he might get well. Mrs. 
Witherell and myself then sang the ^' Shining Shore ;'' a brief 
prayer of hope and trust was offered ; the other patients in the 
room seemed equally well cared for, and interested in all that was 
said and done ; and I passed on to another ward, and never saw 
either the nurse or patient again. But I learned that the soldier 
died ; and that Mrs. Witherell continued in the service, until she 
also died, a martyr to her heroic devotion to the cause of the sick 
and wounded soldiers, for whom she laid down her life, that they 
might live to fight the battles of their country. 

The only facts that I have been able to learn about this noble 
lady, were that at one time she resided in Louisville, and was 
greatly esteemed by her pastor, Rev. John H. Heywood, of the 
Unitarian Church ; that she chose this work of the hospitals from 
the highest motives of religious patriotism and love of humanity ; 
that after serving several months in the Fourth Street Hospital, 
at St. Louis, she was assigned to the hospital steamer, " Empress," 
in the spring of 1862, as matron, or head nurse; that she contin- 
ued on this boat during the next few months, while so many sick 
and wounded were brought from Pittsburg Landing, after the 
battle of Shiloh, and from other battle-fields along the rivers, to 
the hospitals at Mound City and St. Louis ; that she was always 
constant, faithful and never weary of doing good ; and that at 



MRS. E. C. WITHERELL. 501 

last, from her being so much in the infected atmosphere of the 
sick and wounded, she became the victim of a fever, and died on 
the 10th of July, 1862. 

On the occurrence of the sad event, the Western Sanitary 
Commission, who had known and appreciated her services, and 
from whom she held her commission, passed a series of resolu- 
tions, as a tribute to her worth, and her blessed memory, in 
which she was described as one who was ^^ gentle and unobtru- 
sive, with a heart warm with sympathy, and unshrinking in the 
discharge of duty, energetic, untiring, ready to answer every call, 
and unwilling to spare herself where she could alleviate suffering, 
or minister to the comfort of others,^^ as " not a whit behind the 
bravest hero on the battle-field f and as worthy to be held '"'• in 
everlasting remembrance." 



MISS PHEBE ALLEN 




HIS noble woman, who laid down her life in the cause 
of her country, was a teacher in Washington, Iowa, and 
left her school to enter the service as a hospital nurse. 
In the summer of 1863 she was commissioned by Mr. 
Yeatman, at St. Louis, and assigned to duty in the large hospital 
at Benton Barracks, v/here she belonged to the corps of women 
nurses, under the superintendence of Miss Emily E. Parsons, and 
under the general direction of Surgeon Ira Russell. 

In the fulfilment of the duties of a hospital nurse she was very 
conscientious, faithful and devoted; won the respect and confi- 
dence of all who knew her, and is most pleasantly remembered 
by her associates and superior officers. 

In the autumn of 1863 she went home on a furlough, was 
recalled by a letter from Miss Parsons; returned to duty, and 
continued in the service till the summer of 1864, when she was 
taken ill of malarious fever and died at Benton Barracks in the 
very scene of her patriotic and Christian labors, leaving a precious 
memory of her faithfulness and truly noble spirit to her friends 
and the world. 

502 



MRS. EDWIN GREBLE 




MONG the ardently loyal women of Philadelphia; by 
whom such great and untiring labors for the soldiers 
were performed, few did better service in a quiet and 
unostentatious manner than Mrs. Greble. Indeed so 
very quietly did she work that she almost fulfilled the Scripture 
injunction of secrecy as to good deeds. 

The maiden name of Mrs. Greble was Susan Virginia Major. 
She was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, being descended 
on the mother's side from a family of Quakers who were devoted 
to their country in the days of the Revolution with a zeal so 
active and outspoken as to cause them to lose their membership 
in the Society of Friends. Fighting Quakers there have been in 
both great American wars, men whose principles of peace, though 
not easily shaken, were less firm than their patriotism, and their 
traits have in many instances been emulated in the female mem- 
bers of their families. This seems to have been the case with 
Mrs. Greble. 

Her eldest son, John, she devoted to the service of his country. 
He entered the Military Academy at West Point in 1850, at the 
age of sixteen, graduating honorably, and continuing in the ser- 
vice until June, 1861, when he fell at the disastrous battle of 
Great Bethel, one of the earliest martyrs of liberty in the rebel- 
lion. Another son, and the only one remaining after the death 
of the lamented Lieutenant Greble, when but eighteen years of 
age, enlisted, served faithfully, and nearly lost his life by typhoid 

503 



504 

fever. A son-in-law. Lieutenant-Colonel of the Ninetieth Penn- 
sylvania Volunteers, and a brave soldier, was for many months 
a prisoner of war, and experienced the horrors of three different 
Southern prisons. Thus, by inheritance, patriotic, and by per- 
sonal suffering and loss keenly aroused to sympathy with her 
country's brave defenders, Mrs. Greble from the first devoted 
herself earnestly and untiringly to every work of kindness and 
aid which suggested itself. Blessed with abundant means, she 
used them in the most liberal manner in procuring comforts for 
the sick and wounded in hospitals. 

There was ample scope for such labors among the numerous 
hospitals of Philadelphia. Now it was blankets she sent to the 
hospital where they were most needed. Again a piece of sheet- 
ing already hemmed and washed. Almost daily in the season of 
fruit she drove to the hospitals with bushel baskets filled with 
the choicest the market afforded, to tempt the fever-parched lips, 
and refresh the languishing sufferers. Weekly she made gar- 
ments for the soldiers. Leisure moments she employed in knit- 
ting scores of stockings. On holidays her contributions of poultry, 
fruit, and pies, went far toward making up the feasts offered by 
the like-minded, to the convalescents in the various institutions, 
or to soldiers on their way to or from the seat of war. 

It was in this mode that Mrs. Greble served her country, 
amply and freely, but so quietly as to attract little notice. She 
withheld nothing that was in her power to bestow, giving even 
of her most precious treasures, her children, and continuing her 
labors unabated to the close of the war. 



MRS. ISABELLA FOGG. 




AINE has given to the cause of the Union many noble 
heroes, brave spirits who have perilled life and health 
to put down the rebellion, and not a few equally brave 
and noble-hearted women, who in the ministrations of 
mercy have laid on the altar of patriotism their personal services, 
their ease and comfort, their health and some of them even life 
itself to bring healing and comfort to the defenders of their coun- 
try. Among these, few, none perhaps save those who have laid 
down their lives in the service, are more worthy of honor than 
Mrs. Fogg. 

The call for seventy-five thousand men to drive back the inva- 
ders and save the National Capital, met with no more hearty or 
patriotic responses than those that came from the extreme north- 
eastern border of our Union, ^^away towards the sun-rising.'^ 
Calais, in the extreme eastern part of Maine, raised its quota and 
more, upon the instant, and sent them forward promptly. The 
hearts of its women, too were stirred, and each was anxious to do 
something for the soldier. Mrs. Fogg felt that she was called to 
leave her home and minister in some way, she hardly knew how, 
to the comfort of those who were to fight the nation's battles. At 
that time, however, home duties were so pressing that, most reluc- 
tantly, she was compelled to give up for the time the purpose. 
Three months later came the seeming disaster, the real blessing 
in disguise, of Bull Run, and again was her heart moved, this 
time to more definite action, and a more determined purpose. 

64 505 



506 woman's woek in the civii. war. 

Her son, a mere boy, had left school and enlisted to hdp fill the 
ranks from his native State, and she was ready now to go also. 
Applying to the patriotic governor of Maine and to the surgeon- 
general of the State for permission to serve the State, without 
compensation, as its agent for distributing supplies to the sick and 
wounded soldiers of Maine, she was encouraged by them and 
immediately commenced the work of collecting hospital stores for 
her mission. In September, 1861, she in company with Mrs. 
Ruth S. Mayhew, went out with one of the State regiments, and 
caring for its sick, accompanied it to Annapolis. The regiment 
was ordered, late in the autumn, to join General T. W. Sherman's 
expedition to Port Royal, and Mrs. Fogg was desirous of accom- 
panying it, but finding this impracticable, she turned her attention 
to the hospital at Annapolis, in which the spotted typhus fevei 
had broken out and was raging with fearful malignity. The dis- 
ease was exceedingly contagious, and there was great difficulty in 
finding nurses who were willing to risk the contagion. With her 
high sense of duty, Mrs. Fogg felt that here was the place for her, 
and in company with Mrs. Mayhew, another noble daughter of 
Maine, she volunteered for service in this hospital. For more 
than three months did these heroic women remain at their post, 
on duty every day and often through the night for week after 
week, regardless of the infectious character of the disease, and 
only anxious to benefit the poor fever-stricken sufferers. The 
epidemic having subsided, Mrs. Fogg placed herself under the 
direction of the Sanitary Commission, and took part in the spring 
of 1862, in that Hospital Transport Service which we have else- 
where so fully described. The month of June was passed by her 
at the front, at Savage's Station, with occasional visits to the 
brigade hospitals, and to the regimental hospitals of the most 
advanced posts. She remained at her post at Savage's Station, 
until the last moment, ministering to the wounded until the last 
load had been dispatched, and then retreating with the army, over 
land to Harrison's Landing. Here, under the orders of Dr. Let- 



MES. ISABELLA FOGG. 507 

terinan, the medical director, she took special charge of the diet 
of the amputation cases; and subsequently distributed the much 
needf^d supplies furnished by the Sanitary Commission to the sol- 
diers in their lines. 

When the camps at Harrison's Landing were broken up, and 
the army tran ^ferred to the Potomac, she accompanied a ship load 
of the wounded in the S. R. Spaulding, to Philadelphia, saw them 
safely removed to the general hospital, and then returned to 
Maine, for a brief period of rest, having been absent from home 
about a year. Her rest consisted mainly in appeals for further 
and larger supplies of hospital and sanitary stores for the wounded 
men of Maine, who in the battles of Pope's campaign, and Antie- 
tam had been wounded by hundreds. She was successful, and 
early in October returned to Washington and the hospitals of 
northern Maryland, where she proved an angel of mercy to the 
suffering. When McClellan's army crossed the Potomac, she fol- 
lowed, and early in December, 1862, was again at the front, where 
she "was on the 13th, a sad spectator of the fatal disaster of 
Fredericksburg. The Maine Camp Hospital Association had 
been formed the preceding summer, and Mrs. J. S. Eaton, 
one of its managers, had accompanied Mrs. Fogg to the front. 
During the sad weeks that followed the battle of Fredericksburg, 
these devoted ladies labored with untiring assiduity in the hos- 
pitals, and dispensed their supplies of food and clothing, not only 
to the Maine boys, but to others who were in need. 

When the battles of Chancellors ville were fought in the first 
days of May, 1863, Mrs. Fogg and Mrs. Eaton spent almost a 
week of incessant labor, much of the time day and night, in the 
temporary hospitals near United States Ford, their labors being 
shared for one or two days by Mrs. Husband, in dressing wounds, 
and attending to the poor fellows who had suflPered amputation, 
and furnishing cordials and food to the wounded who were re- 
treating from thQ field, pursued by the enemy. One of these 
Hospitals in which they had been thus laboring till they were 



508 



completely exhausted, was shelled by the enemy while they were 
in it, and while it was filled with the wounded. The attack Avas 
of short duration, for the battery whicli had shelled them was 
soon silenced, but one of the w^ounded soldiers was killed by a 
shell. 

In works like these, in the care of the wounded who were sent 
in by flag of truce, and the distribution to the needy of the stores 
received from Maine, the days passed quickly, till the invasion 
of Pennsylvania by General Lee, which culminated in the battle 
of Gettysburg. Mrs. Fogg pushed forward and reached the bat- 
tle-field the day after the final battle, but she could not obtain 
transportation for her stores at that time, and was obliged to col- 
lect what she could from the farmers in the vicinity, and use what 
was put into her hands for distribution by others, until hers could 
be brought up. She labored with her usual assiduity and pa- 
tience among this great mass of wounded and dying men, for 
nearly two weeks, and then, abundant helpers having arrived, she 
returned to the front, and was with the Army as a voluntaj:'y 
Special Relief agent, through all its changes of position on and 
about the Rapidan, at the aifair of Mine Run, the retreat and 
pursuit to Bristow Station, and the other movements prior to 
General Grant's assumption of the chief command. In the win- 
ter of 1864, she made a short visit home, and the Legislature 
voted an appropriation of a considerable sum of money to be 
placed at her disposal, to be expended at her discretion for the 
comfort and succor of Maine soldiers. 

At the opening of the great Campaign of May, 1864, she hast- 
ened to Belle Plain and Fredericksburg, and there, in company 
with scores of other faithful and earnest workers, toiled night 
and day to relieve so far as possible the indescribable suffering 
which filled that desolated city. After two or three weeks, she 
went forward to Port Royal, to White House, and finally to City 
Point, where, in connection with Mrs. Eaton of the Maine Camp 
Hospital Association, she succeeded in bringing one of the Hos- 



MRS. ISABELLA FOGG. 509 

pitals up to the highest point of efficiency. This accomplished, 
she returned to Maine, and was engaged in stimulating the wo- 
men of her State to more effective labors, when she received the 
intelligence that her son who had been in the Army of the She- 
nandoah, had been mortally wounded at the battle of Cedar-Run. 

With all a mother^s anxieties aroused, she abandoned her work 
in Maine, and hastened to Martinsburg, Virginia, to ascertain 
what was really her son's fate. Here she met a friend, one of the 
delegates of the Christian Commission, and learned from him, 
that her son had indeed been badly wounded, and had been 
obliged to undergo the amputation of one leg, but had borne the 
operation well, and after a few days had been transferred to a 
Baltimore Hospital. To that city she hastened, and greatly to 
her joy, found him doing well. Anxiety and over exertion soon 
prostrated her own health, and she was laid upon a sick bed for 
a month or more. 

In November, her health being measurably restored, she re- 
turned to Washington, and asked to be assigned to duty by the 
Christian Commission. She was directed to report to Mrs. Annie 
Wittenmeyer, who was the Commission's Agent for the establish- 
ment of Special Diet Kitchens in the Hospitals. Mrs. Witten- 
meyer assigned her a position in charge of the Special Diet 
Kitchen, on one of the large hospital-boats plying between Louis- 
ville and Nashville. Whileonduty on board this boat in January, 
1865, she fell through one of the hatchways, and received in- 
juries Avhich will probably disable her for life, and her condition 
was for many months so critical as not to permit her removal to 
her native State. It would seem that here was cause for repin- 
ing, had she been of a querulous disposition. Herself an invalid 
for life, among strangers, her only son permanently crippled from 
w^ounds received in battle, with none but stranger hands to min- 
ister to her necessities, who had done so much to soothe the an- 
guish and mitigate the sorrows of others, there was but little to 
outward appearance, to compensate her for her four years of ar- 



510 woman's work in the civil war. 

duous toil for others, and her present condition of helplessness. 
Yet we are told, that amid all these depressing circumstances, 
this heroic woman was full of joy, that she had been permitted 
to labor so long, and accomplish so much for her country and its 
defenders, and that peace had at last dawned upon the nation. 
Even pain could bring no cloud over her brow, no gloom to her 
heart. To such a heroine, the nation owes higher honors than it 
has ever bestowed upon the victors of the battle-field. 



MRS. E. E. GEORGE 




LD age is generally reckoned as sluggish, infirm, and 
not easily roused to deeds of active patriotism and 
earnest endeavor. The aged think and deliberate, but 
are slow to act. Yet in this glorious work of American 
Women during the late war, aged women were found ready to 
volunteer for posts of arduous labor, from which even those in 
the full vigor of adult womanhood shrank. We shall have occa- 
sion to notice this often in the work of the Volunteer Refreshment 
Saloons, the Soldiers' Homes, etc., where the heavy burdens of toil 
were borne oftenest by those who had passed the limits of three 
score years and ten. 

Another and a noble example of heroism even to death in a 
lady advanced in years, is found in the case of Mrs. E. E. George. 
The Military Agency of Indiana, located at the capital of the 
State, became, under the influence and promptings of the patriotic 
and able Governor Morton, a power for good both in the State 
and in the National armies. Being in constant communication 
with every part of the field, it was readily and promptly informed 
of suffering, or want of supplies by the troops of the State at 
any point, and at once provided for the emergency. The supply 
of women-nurses for camp, field, or general hospital service, was 
also made a part of the work of this agency, and the efficient 
State Agent, Mr. Hannaman, sent into the service two hundred 
and fifty ladies, who were distributed in the hospitals and at the 
front, all over the region in insurrection. 

511 



512 woman's work in the civil war. 

One of these, Mrs. E. E. George, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, first 
applied to Mr. Hannaman for a commission in January, 1863. 
She brought with her strong recommendations, but her age was 
considered by the agent a serious objection. She admitted this, 
but her health was excellent, and she possessed more vigor than 
many ladies much younger. She was, besides, an accomplished 
and skilful nurse. 

She was sent by Mr. Hannaman to Memphis where the wounded 
from the unsuccessful attack on Chickasaw Bluffs, — and the suc- 
cessful but bloody assault on Arkansas Post, — were gathered, and 
her thorough qualifications for her position, her dignity of man- 
ner and her high intelligence, soon gave her great influence. 
During the whole Vicksburg campaign, and into the autumn of 
1863, she remained in the Memphis hospitals, working inces- 
santly. After a short visit home, in September, she went to 
Corinth where Sherman's Fifteenth Corps were stationed, and 
remained there until their departure for Chattanooga. She then 
visited Pulaski and assisted in opening a hospital there, Mrs. 
Porter and Mrs. Bickerdyke co-operating with her, and several 
times she visited Indiana and procured supplies for her hospital. 
When Sherman commenced his forward movement toward At- 
lanta, in May, 1864, Mrs. George and her friends, Mrs. Porter 
and Mrs. Bickerdyke, accompanied the army, and during the 
succession of severe battles of that campaign, she was always ready 
to minister to the wounded soldiers in the field. When Atlanta 
was invested in the latter part of July, 1864, she took charge of 
the Fifteenth Army Corps Hospital as Matron, and in the battles 
which terminated in the surrender of Atlanta, on the 1st of Sep- 
tember, she was under fire. After the fall of Atlanta she re- 
turned home to rest and prepare for another campaign. She 
could not accompany Sherman's army to Savannah, but went to 
Nashville, where during and after Hood's siege of that city she 
found abundant employment. 

Learning that Sherman's army was at Savannah, she set out 



MES. E. E. GEOEGE. 513 

for that city, via New York, intending to join the Fifteenth 
Corps, to which she had become strongly attached; but through 
some mistake, she was not provided with a pass, and visiting 
Washington to obtain one, Miss Dix persuaded her to change her 
plans and go to Wilmington, North Carolina, which had just 
passed into Union hands, and where great numbers of Union 
prisoners were accumulating. She had but just reached the ^ity 
when eleven thousand prisoners, just released from Salisbury, and 
in the worst condition of starvation, disease and wretchedness 
were brought in. Mrs. George, though supplied with but scant 
provision of hospital stores or conveniences, gave herself most 
heartily to the work of providing for those poor sufferers, and 
soon found an active coadjutor in Mrs. Harriet F. Hawley, the 
wife of the gallant general in command of the post. Heroically 
and incessantly these two ladies worked; Mrs. George gave her- 
self no rest day or night. The sight of such intense suffering 
led her to such over exertion that her strength, impaired by her 
previous labors, gave way, and she sank under an attack of 
typhus, then prevailing among the prisoners. A skilful physician 
gave her the most careful attention, but it was of no avail. She 
died, another of those glorious martyrs, who more truly than the 
dying heroes of the battle-field have given their lives for their 
country. To such patient faithful souls there awaits in the " Bet- 
ter Land^' that cordial recognition foreshadowed by the poet: 

" While valor's haughty champions wait, 
Till all their scars be shown, 
Love walks unchallenged through the gate 
To sit beside the Throne." 
65 



MRS CHARLOTTE E. McKAY, 



p^ 


1 



HIS lady, a resident of Massachusetts, had early in the 
war been bereaved of her husband and only child, not 
by the vicissitudes of the battle-field but by sickness at 
home, and her heart worn with grief, sought relief, 
where it was most likely to find it, in ministering to the sufferings 
of others. 

She accepted an appointment under Miss Dix as a hospital 
nurse, and commenced her hospital life in Frederick City, Mary- 
land, in March, 1862, where she was entrusted with the care of 
a large number of wounded from the first battle of Winchester. 
Her life here passed without much of special interest, till Sep- 
tember, 1862, when the little Maryland city was filled for two or 
three days with Stonewall Jackson's Corps on their way to South 
Mountain and Antietam. The rebels took possession of the hos- 
pital, and filled it for the time with their sick and wounded men. 
Resistance was useless, and Mrs. McKay treated the rebel ofiicers 
and men courteously, and did what she could for the sick; her 
civility and kindness were recognized, and she was treated with 
respect by all. After the battle of Antietam, Frederick City and 
its hospitals were filled with the wounded, and Mrs. McKay's 
heart and hands were full — but as soon as the wounded became 
convalescent, she went to Washington and was assigned to 
duty for a time in the hospitals of the Capital. In January, she 
went to Falmouth and found employment as a nurse in the Third 
Corps Hospital. Here by her skill and tact she soon effected a 

514 



MRS. CHARLOTTE E. McKAY. 515 

revolution, greatly to the comfort of the poor fellows in the hos- 
pital. From being the worst it became the best of the corps hos- 
pitals at the front. General Birney and his excellent wife, 
seconded and encouraged all her efforts for its improvement. 

The battles which though scattered over a wide extent of ter- 
ritory, and fought at different times and by different portions of 
the contending forces, have yet been known under the generic 
name of Chancellors ville, were full of horrors for Mrs. McKay. 
She witnessed the bloody but successful assault on Marye's 
Heights, and while ministering to the wounded who covered all 
the ground in front of the fortified position, received the sad- 
dening intelligence that her brother, who was with Hooker at 
Chancellorsville, had been instantly killed in the protracted fight- 
ing there. Other of her friends too had fallen, but crushing the 
agony of her own loss back into her heart, she went on minister- 
ing to the wounded. Six weeks later she was in Washington, 
awaiting the battle between Lee's forces and Hooker's, afterwards 
commanded by General Meade. When the intelligence of the 
three days' conflict at Gettysburg came, she went to Baltimore, 
and thence by such conveyance as she could find, to Gettysburg, 
reaching the hospital of her division, five miles from Gettysburg, 
on the 7th of July. Here she remained for nearly two months, 
laboring zealously for the welfare of a thousand or fifteen hundred 
wounded men. In the autumn she again sought the hospital of 
the Third Division, Third Corps, at the front, which for the time 
was at Warrenton, Virginia. After the battle of Mine Run, she 
had ample employment in the care of the wounded; and later in 
the season she had charge of one of the hospitals at Brandy Station. 
Like the other ladies who were connected with hospitals at this 
place, she was compelled to retire by the order of April 15th; 
but like them she returned to her M^ork early in May, at Belle 
Plain, Fredericksburg, White House, and City Point, where she 
labored with great assiduity and success. The changes in the 
army organization in June, 1864, removed most of her friends in 



516 

the old third corps, and Mrs. McKay, on the invitation of the 
surgeon in charge of the cavahy corps hospital, took charge of 
the special diet of that hospital, where she remained for nearly a 
year, finally leaving the service in March, 1865, and remaining 
in Virginia in the care and instruction of the freedmen till late 
in the spring of 1866. The officers and men who had been under 
her care in the Cavalry Corps Hospital, presented her on Christ- 
mas day, 1864, with an elegant gold badge and chain, with a 
suitable inscription, as a testimonial of their gratitude for her ser- 
vices. She had previously received from the officers of the Seven- 
teenth Maine Volunteers, whom she had cared for after the battle 
of Chancellorsville, a magnificent Kearny Cross, with its motto 
and an inscription indicating by whom it was presented. 



MRS. FANNY L. RICKETTS. 




RS. RICKETTS is the daughter of English parents, 
though born at Elizabeth, ISTew Jersey. She is the 
wife of Major-General Ricketts, United States Volun- 
teers, who at the time of their marriage was a Captain 
in the First Artillery, in the United States Army, and with whom 
she went immediately after their union, to his post on the Rio 
Grande. After a residence of more than three years on the fron- 
tier, the First Artillery was ordered in the spring of 1861, to 
Fortress Monroe, and her husband commenced a school of prac- 
tice in artillery, for the benefit of the volunteer artillerymen, 
who, under his instruction, became expert in handling the guns. 
In the first battle of Bull Run, Captain Ricketts commanded 
a, battery of light artillery, and was severely, and it was supposed, 
mortally wounded and taken prisoner. The heroic wife at once 
applied for passes to go to him, and share his captivity, and if 
need be bring away his dead body. General Scott granted her 
such passes as he could give ; but with the Rebels she found more 
difficulty, her parole being demanded, but on appeal to General 
J. E. Johnston, she was supplied with a pass and guide. She 
found her husband very low, and suffering from inattention, but 
his case was not quite hopeless. It required all her courage to 
endure the hardships, privations and cruelties to which the Union 
women were, even then, subject, but she schooled herself to endur- 
ance, and while caring for her husband during the long weeks 
when his life hung upon a slender thread, she became also a min- 

517 



518 

ister of mercy to the numerous Union prisoners, who had not a 
wife^s tender care. When removed to Richmoud, Captain Rick- 
etts was still in great peril, and under the discomforts of his sit- 
uation, grew rapidly worse. For many weeks he was unconscious, 
and his death seemed inevitable. At length four months after 
receiving his wound, he began very slowly to improve, when 
intelligence came that he was to be taken as one of the hostages 
for the thirteen privateersmen imprisoned in New York. Mrs. 
Ricketts went at once to Mrs. Cooper, the wife of the Confederate 
Adjutant-General, and used such arguments, as led the Confed- 
erate authorities to rescind the order, so far as he was concerned. 
He was exchanged in the latter part of December, 1861, and 
having partially recovered from his wounds, was commissioned 
Brigadier-General, in March, 1862, and assigned to the command 
of a brigade in McDowell's Corps, at Fredericksburg. He passed 
unscathed through Pope's Campaign, but at Antietam was again 
wounded, though not so severely as before, and after two or three 
months' confinement, was in the winter of 1862-3, in Washington, 
as President of a Military Commission. 

General Ricketts took part in the battles of Chancellorsville 
and Gettysburg, and escaped personal injury, but his wife in 
gratitude for his preservation, ministered to the wounded, and for 
months continued her labors of love among them. 

In Grant's Campaign in 1864, General Ricketts distinguished 
himself for bravery in several battles, commanding a division ; 
and at the battle of Monocacy, though he could not defeat the 
overwhelming force of the Rebels, successfully delayed their 
advance upon Baltimore. He then joined the Army of the 
Shenandoah, and in the battle of Middletown, October 19th, Avas 
again seriously, and it was thought mortally wounded. Again 
for four months did this devoted wife watch most patiently and 
tenderly over his couch of pain, and again was her tender nurs- 
ing blessed to his recovery. In the closing scenes in the Army 
of the Potomac which culminated in Lee's surrender, General 



MES. FANNY L. RICKETTS. 519 

Ricketts was once more in the field, and though suffering from 
his wounds, he did not leave his command till by the capitula- 
tion of the Rebel chief, the war was virtually concluded. The 
heroic wife remained at the Union headquarters, watchful lest he 
for whom she had perilled life and health so often, should again 
be smitten down, but she was mercifully spared this added sor- 
row, and her husband was permitted to retire from the active 
ranks of the army, covered with scars honorably won. 



MRS. JOHN S. PHELPS. 




T the commencement of the War, Mrs. Phelps was re- 
siding in her pleasant home at Springfield, Missouri, 
her husband and herself, were both originally from New 
England, but years of residence in the Southwest, had 
caused them to feel a strong attachment for the region and its in- 
stitutions. They were both, however, intensely loyal. Mr. 
Phelps was a member of Congress, elected as a Union man, and 
when it became evident that the South would resort to war, he 
offered his services to the General Government, raised a regiment 
and went into the field under the heroic Lyon. After the battle 
of Wilson^s Creek, Mrs. Phelps succeeded in rescuing the body 
of General Lyon, and had it buried where it was within her con- 
trol, and as soon as possible forwarded it to his friends in Con- 
necticut. Her home was plundered subsequently by the Rebels, 
and nearly ruined. At the battle of Pea Ridge, Mrs. Phelps 
accompanied her husband to the field, and while the battle was 
yet raging, she assisted in the care of the wounded, tore up her 
own garments for bandages, dressed their wounds, cooked food, 
and made soup and broth for them, with her own hands, remain- 
ing with them as long as there was anything she could do, and 
giving not only words but deeds of substantial kindness and 
sympathy. 

Col. Phelps was subsequently made Military Governor of 

520 



MRS. JOHN S. PHELPS. 521 

Arkansas, and in the many bloody battles in that State, she was 
ready to help in every way in her power ; and in her visits to 
the East, she plead the cause of the suffering loyalists of Mis- 
souri and Arkansas, among her friends with great earnestness 
and success. 

66 



MRS. JANE R. MUNSELL. 




ARYLAND, though strongly claimed by the Rebels 
as their territory almost throughout the War, had yet, 
many loyal men and women in its country villages as 
well as in its larger cities. The legend of Barbara 
Freitchie's defiance of Stonewall Jackson and his hosts, has been 
immortalized in Whittier's charming verse, and the equally brave 
defiance of the Rebels by Mrs. Effie Titlow, of Middletown, 
Maryland, who wound the fiag about her, and stood in the bal- 
cony of her own house, looking calmly at the invading troops, 
who were filled with wrath at her fearlessness deserves a like 
immortality. Mrs. Titlow proved after the subsequent battle 
of Gettysburg, that she possessed the disposition to labor for the 
wounded faithfully and indefatigably, as well as the gallantry 
to defy their enemies. 

Mrs. Jane R. Munsell, of Sandy Spring, Maryland, was an- 
other of these Maryland heroines, but her patriotism manifested 
Itself in her incessant toils for the sick and wounded after An- 
tietam and Gettysburg. For their sake, she gave up all ; her 
iiome and its enjoyments, her little property, yea, and her own 
life also, for it was her excessive labor for the wounded soldiers 
which exhausted her strength and terminated her life. A corres- 
pondent of one of the daily papers of New York city, who knew 
her well, says of her : " A truer, kinder, or more lovely or lov- 

622 



MRS. JANE E. MUNSELL. 523 

ing woman never lived than she. Her name is a household word 
with the troops, and her goodnesses have passed into proverbs in 
the camps and sick-rooms and hospitals. She died a victim to 
her own kind-heartedness, for she went far beyond her strength 
in her blessed ministrations." 



PART III. 

LADIES WHO ORGANIZED AID SOCIETIES, AND SOLICITED, RECEIVED 

AND FORWARDED SUPPLIES TO THE HOSPITALS, DEVOTING 

THEIR WHOLE TIME TO THE WORK, ETC., ETC. 



WOMAN^S CENTRAL ASSOCIATION 
OF RELIEF. 




HEN President Lincoln issued his proclamation, a 
quick thrill shot through the heart of every mother in 
New York. The Seventh Regiment left at once for 
the defense of Washington, and the women met at 
once in parlors and vestries. Perhaps nothing less than the 
maternal instinct could have forecast the terrible future so 
quickly. From the parlors of the Drs. Blackwell, and from Dr. 
Bellows' vestry, came the first call for a public meeting. On the 
29th of April, 1861, between three and four thousand women 
met at the Cooper Union, David Dudley Field in the chair, and 
eminent men as speakers. 

The object was to consecrate scattered efforts by a large and 
formal organization. Hence the " Woman's Central Association 
of Relief," the germ of the Sanitary Commission. Dr. Bellows, 
and Dr. E. Harris, left for Washington as delegates to establish 
those relations with the Government, so necessary for harmony 
and usefulness. The board of the Woman's Central, after many 
changes, consisted of, 

Valentine Mott, M. D., President, 
Henry W. Bellows, D. D., Vice President, 
George F. Allen, Esq., Secretary, 
Howard Potter, Esq., Treasurer. 

527 



528 

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 
H.W. Bellows,!). J)., Chairma7i. Valentine Mott, M. D. 
Mrs. G. L. Schuyler.* Mrs. T. d^Oremieulx. 

Miss Ellen Collins. W. H. Draper, M. D. 

F. L. Olmstead, Esq. G. F. Allen, Esq. 

REGISTRATION COMMITTEE. 
E. Blackwell, M. D., Chairman. Mrs. W. P. Griffin, Secretary, 
Mrs. H. Baylis. Mrs. J. A. Swett. 

Mrs. y. Botta. Mrs. C. Abernethy. 

Wm. A. Muhlenburg, D. D. E. Harris, M. D. 

FINANCE COMMITTEE. 
Howard Potter, Esq. Mrs. Hamilton Fish. 

John D. Wolfe, Esq. Mrs. C. M. Kirkland. 

William Hague, D. D. Mrs, C. W. Field. 

J. H. Markoe, M. D. Asa D. Smith,' D. D. 

While in Washington, Dr. Bellows originated the "United 
States Sanitary Commission,'' and on the 24th of June, 1864, the 
Woman's Central voluntarily offered to become subordinate as 
one of its branches of supply. The following September this 
offer was accepted in a formal resolution, establishing also a semi- 
weekly correspondence between the two boards, by which the 
wants of the army were made known to the Woman's Central. 

Prominent and onerous were the duties of the Registration 
Committee. Its members met daily, to select from numberless 
applicants, women fitted to receive special training in our city 
hospitals for the position of nurses. So much of moral as well 
as mental excellence was indispensable, that the committee found 
its labors incessant. Then followed the supervision while in 
hospital, and while awaiting a summons, then the outfit and for- 
warding, often suddenly and in bands, and lastly, the acceptance 
by the War Department and Medical Bureau. 

* This lady's place was filled by her daughter from the beginning. 



529 

The chairman of the committeej Miss E. Blackwell, accompa- 
nied by its secretary, Mrs. Griffin, went to Washington in this 
service. Miss BlackwelPs admirable report "on the selection 
and preparation of nurses for the army," will always be a source 
of pride to the Woman's Central. 

In the meantime, the Finance and Executive Committees were 
struggling for a strong foothold. The chairman of the former, 
Mrs. Hamilton Fish, raised over five thousand dollars by per- 
sonal effort. The latter committee had the liveliest contests, for 
the Government declared itself through the Army Regulation, 
equal to any demands, and the people were disposed to cry amen. 
Rumors of " a ninety days' war,'' and " already more lint than 
would be needed for years," stirred the committee to open at once 
a correspondence with sewing-societies, churches, and communities 
in New York and elsew^here. Simultaneously, the Sanitary 
Commission issued an explanatory circular, urgent and minute, 
" To the loyal women of America." 

Then began that slow yet sure stream of supplies which flowed 
on to the close of the war, so slow, indeed, at first, and so impa- 
tiently hoped for, that the members of the committee could not 
wait, but must rush to the street to see the actual arrival of boxes 
and bales. Soon, however, that good old office, No. 10, Cooper 
Union, became rich in everything needed; rich, too, in young 
women to unpack, mark and repack, in old women to report 
forthcoming contributions from grocers, merchants and tradesmen, 
and richer than all, in those wondrous boxes of sacrifices from 
the country, the last blanket, the inherited quilt, curtains torn 
from windows, and the coarse yet ancestral linen. In this per- 
sonal self-denial the city had no part. What wonder that the 
whole corps of the Woman's Central felt their time and physicial 
fatigue as nothing in comparison to these heart trials. Out of 
this responsive earnestness grew the carefully prepared reports 
and circulars, the filing of letters, thousands in number, contained 
ill twenty-five volumes, their punctilious and grateful acknow- 

67 



530 

ledgement, and the thorough plan of books, three in number, by 
which the whole story of the Woman's Central may be learnt, 
and well would it repay the study. 

First, The receiving book recorded the receipt and acknow- 
ledgement of box. 

Second, In the day book, each page was divided into columns, 
in which was recorded, the letter painted on the cover of each 
box to designate it, and the kind and amount of supplies which 
each contained after repacking, only one description of supplier 
being placed in any one box. So many cases were received dur- 
ing the four years, that the alphabet was repeated seven hundred 
and twenty-seven times. 

Third, The ledger with its headings of " shirts," " drawers," 
"socks," etc., so arranged, that on sudden demand, the exact 
number of any article on hand could be ascertained at a glance. 

Thus early began through these minute details, the eifectiveness 
of the Woman's Central. Every woman engaged in it learnt the 
value of precision. 

A sub-committee for New York and Brooklyn was formed, 
consisting of Mrs. W. M. Fellows, and Mrs. Eobert Colby, to 
solicit from citizens, donations of clothing, and supplies of all 
kinds. These ladies were active, successful and clerkly withal, 
giving receipts for every article received. 

Those present at Dr. Bellows' Church in May, will never 
forget the first thrilling call for nurses on board the hospital 
transports. The duty was imperative, was untried and therefore 
startling. It was like a sudden plunge into unknown waters, yet 
many brave women enrolled their names. From the Woman's 
Central went forth Mrs. Griffin accompanied by Mrs. David Lane. 
They left at once in the " Wilson Small," and went up the York 
and Pamunkey rivers, and to White House, thus tasting the first 
horrors of war. This experience would form a brilliant chapter 
in the history of the Woman's Central. 

In June, 1861, the association met with a great loss in the 



531 

departure of Mrs. d'Or^mieulx, for Europe. Of her Dr. Bel- 
lows said : " It would be ungrateful not to acknowledge the zeal, 
devotion and ability of one of the ladies of this committee, Mrs. 
d'Or^mieulx, now absent from the country, who labored inces- 
santly in the earlier months of the organization, and gave a most 
vital start to the life of this committee.'^ This lady resumed her 
duties after a year's absence, and continued her characteristic force 
and persistency up to the close. 

At this time, Mr. S. W. Bridgham put his broad shoulders to 
the wheel. He had been a member of the board from the begin- 
ning, but not a " day-laborer" until now. And not this alone, 
for he was a night-laborer also. At midnight, and in the still 
"darker hours which precede the dawn,'' Mr. Bridgham and his 
faithful ally, Koberts, often left their beds to meet sudden emer- 
gencies, and to ship comforts to distant points. On Sundays too, 
he and his patriotic wife might be easily detected creeping under 
the half-opened door of IN'umber 10, to gather up for a sudden 
requisition, and then to beg of the small city expresses, transpor- 
tation to ship or railroad. This was often his Sunday worship. 
His heart and soul were given to the work. 

In November, 1862, a council of representatives from the prin- 
cipal aid-societies, now numbering fourteen hundred and sixty- 
two, was held in Washington. The chief object was to obtain 
supplies more steadily. Immediately after a battle, but too late 
for the exigency, there was an influx, then a lull. The Woman's 
Central therefore urged its auxiliaries to send a monthly box. It 
also urged the Federal principle, that is, the bestowment of all 
supplies on United States troops, and not on individuals or regi- 
ments, and explained to the public that the Sanitary Commission 
acted in aid of, and not in opposition to the government. 

In January, 1863, all supplies had been exhausted by the 
battles of Antietam and Fredericksburg. Everything was again 
needed. An able letter of inquiry to secretaries of the auxiliary 
societies with a preliminary statement of important facts, was 



532 

drawn up by Miss Louisa L. Schuyler, and issued in pamphlet 
form. Two hundred and thirty-five replies were received, (all to 
be read) ! which were for the most part favorable to the Sanitary 
Commission with its Federal principle as a medium, and all 
breathed the purest patriotism. 

In February, the plan of " Associate Managers" borrowed from 
the Boston branch was adopted. Miss Schuyler assumed the 
whole labor. It was a division of the tributary states into sec- 
tions, an associate manager to each, who should supervise, control 
and stimulate every aid-society in her section, going from village 
to village, and organizing, if need be, as she went. She should 
hold a friendly correspondence monthly, with the committee on 
correspondence (now separated from that on supplies) besides send- 
ing an official monthly report. To ascertain the right woman, 
one who should combine the talent, energy, tact and social influ- 
ence for this severe field, was the difficult preliminary step. Then, 
to gain her consent, to instruct, and to place her in relations with 
tlie auxiliaries, involved an amount of correspondence truly fright- 
ful. It was done. Yet, in one sense, it was never done; for up 
to the close, innumerable little rills from "pastures new" were 
guided on to the great stream. The experience of every associate 
manager, endeared to the Woman's Central through the closest 
sympathy would be a rare record. 

An elaborate and useful set of books was arranged by Miss 
Schuyler in furtherance of the work of the committee " on corres- 
pondence, and diffiision of information." Lecturers were also to be 
obtained by this committee, and this involved much forethought 
and preparation of the field. Three hundred and sixty-nine lec- 
tures were delivered uj)on the work of the Sanitary Commission, 
by nine gentlemen. 

State agencies made great confusion in the hospitals. The 
Sanitary Commission was censured for employing paid agents, 
and its board of officers even, was accused of receiving salaries. 
Its agents were abused for wastefulness, as if the frugality so 



proper in health, were not improper in sickness. Reports were 
in circulation injurious to the honor of the Commission. Ex- 
planations had become necessary. The Woman's Central, there- 
fore, published a pamphlet written by Mr. George T. Strong, 
entitled: "How can we best help our Camps and Hospitals?" 
In this the absolute necessity of paid agents was conclusively 
vindicated ; the false report of salaries to the board of officers was 
denied, and the true position of the Sanitary Commission with 
reference to the National Government and its medical bureau was 
again patiently explained. A series of letters from assistant-sur- 
geons of the army and of volunteers, recommending the Com- 
mission to the confidence of the people, was also inserted. 

About this time a Hospital Directory was opened at Number 
10, Cooper Union. 

In the spring of 1863, the Woman's Central continued to be 
harassed, not by want of money, for that was always promised 
by its undaunted treasurer, but by lack of clothing and edibles. 
The price of all materials had greatly advanced, the reserved treas- 
ures of every household were exhausted, the early days of have- 
locks and Sunday industry had gone forever, and the Sanitary 
Commission was frequently circumvented and calumniated by rival 
organizations. The members of the Woman's Central worked inces- 
santly. Miss Collins was always at her post. She had never left 
it. Her hand held the reins taut from the beginning to the end. She 
alone went to the office daily, remaining after office hours, which 
were from nine to six, and taking home to be perfected in the still 
hours of night those elaborate tables of supplies and their dis- 
bursement, which formed her monthly Report to the Board of 
the Woman's Central. These tables are a marvel of method and 
clearness. 

To encourage its struggling Aid-Societies, who were without 
means, but earnest in their offers of time and labor, the Woman's 
Central offered to purchase for them materials at wholesale prices. 
This was eagerly accepted by many. A purchasing Committee 



534 woman's work in the civil war. 

was organized, consisting of Mrs. J. H. Swett, Mrs. H. Fish, 
Mrs. S. Weir Roosevelt. 

Miss Schuyler's wise " Plan of organization for country So- 
cieties," and the founding of "Alert-clubs," as originated in 
Norwalk (Ohio), also infused new life into the tributaries. Her 
master-mind smoothed all difficulties, and her admirable Reports 
so full of power and pathos, probed the patriotism of all. So- 
cieties were urged to work as if the war had just begun. From 
these united eiforts, supplies came in steadily, so that in the sum- 
mer of 1863, the Woman's Central, was able to contribute largely 
to the Stations at Beaufort and Morris Island. The blessings thus 
poured in were dispensed by Dr. and Mrs. Marsh, with their 
usual good judgment, and it is grateful to remember that the 
sufferers from that thrilling onslaught at Fort Wagner, were 
among the recipients. 

In the summer of 1863, the Association lost its faithful Secre- 
tary, Mr. George F. Allen. Mr. S. W. Bridgham was elected 
in his place. 

During this eventful summer. Miss Collins and Mrs. Griffin, 
had sole charge of the office, through the terrible 'New York 
riots. These ladies usually alternated in the summer months, 
never allowing the desk of the Supply Committee to be without 
a responsible head. Mrs. Griffin also became Chairman of the 
Special Relief Committee organized in 1863, all of whom made 
personal visits to the sick, and relieved many cases of extreme 
suffering. 

Early in January, 1864, a Council of women was summoned 
to Washington. Thirty-one delegates were present from the 
Eastern and Western branches. Miss Collins and Miss Schuyler 
were sent by the Woman's Central. This meeting gave a new 
impulse to the work. These toilers in the war met face to face, 
compared their various experiences, and suggested future expe- 
dients. Miss Schuyler took special pains to encourage personal 
intercourse between the different branches. Her telescopic eye 



535 

swept the whole field. The only novelty proposed, was County 
Councils every three or six months, composed of delegates from 
the Aid-Societies. This would naturally quicken emulation, and 
prove a wholesome stimulus. Westchester County led imme- 
diately in this movement. 

About this time supplies were checked by the whirlwind of 
" Fairs." The Woman's Central, issued a Circular urging its 
Auxiliaries to continue their regular contributions, and to make 
their working for Fairs a pastime only. In no other w^ay could 
it meet the increased demands upon its resources, for the sphere 
of the Sanitary Commission's usefulness had now extended to 
remotest States, and its vast machinery for distribution had be- 
come more and more expensive. 

Letters poured in from the country, unflinching letters, but 
crying out, " we are poor." What was to be done ? How en- 
courage these devoted sewing-circles and aid-societies ? Every 
article had advanced still more in price. A plan was devised to 
double the amount of any sum raised by the feeble Aid-Societies, 
not exceeding thirty dollars per month. Thus, any Society send- 
ing twenty dollars, received in return, goods to the value of forty. 
This scheme proved successful. It grew into a large business, 
increasing greatly the labors of the Purchasing Committee, in- 
volving a new set of account books and a salaried accountant. 
Duly the smaller Societies availed themselves of this offer. The 
Sanitary Commission, agreed to meet this additional expense of 
the Woman's Central, amounting to over five thousand dollars 
per month. Thus an accumulation was gathered for the coming 
campaign. 

In November, 1864, The Woman's Central convened, and 
defrayed the expenses of a Soldiers' Aid Society Council, at which 
two hundred and fifteen delegates were present. 

The Military Hospitals near the city had,^from time to time, 
received assistance, though not often needed from the Association. 
The Navy too, received occasional aid. 



536 

In the spring of 1865, The Woman's Central lost its Presi- 
dent, Dr. Mott, whose fame gave weight to its early organization. 
From respect to his memory, it was resolved that no other should 
fill his place. 

At last, in April, 1865, came the glad tidings of great joy. Lee 
had surrendered. In May, Miss Collins wrote a congratulatory 
letter to the Aid-Societies, naming the 4th of July, as the closing 
day of the Woman's Central, and urging active work up to that 
time, as hospital and field supplies would still be needed. With 
tender forethought, she also begged them to keep alive their or- 
ganizations, for "the privilege of cherishing the maimed and 
disabled veterans who are returning to us." 

The receipts and disbursements of the Woman's Central are 
as astounding to itself as to the public. So much love and patriot- 
ism, so little money! As early as May, 1863, the Treasurer in 
his Report, remarks : 

" That so small a sum should cover all the general amount of 
expenses of the Association in the transaction of a business which, 
during the year, has involved the receipt or purchase, assorting, 
cataloguing, marking, packing, storing and final distribution of 
nearly half a million of articles, will be no less satisfactory to the 
donors of the funds so largely economized for the direct benefit 
of the soldier, than to those friends of the Association from whose 
self-denying, patriotic and indefatigable personal labors, this 
economy has resulted." 

In the Table of supplies received and distributed from May 
1st, 1861, to July 7th, 1865, prepared by Miss Collins, the item 
of shirts alone amounts to two hundred and ninety-one thousand 
four hundred and seventy-five. 

For four years' distribution, purchase of hospital delicacies, and 
all office expenses, except those of the committee which purchased 
material for the aid-societies amounting to seventy-nine thousand 
three hundred and ninety dollars and fifty-seven cents, the sum 




ivlKS. }vLABLANNE F. STRAX,AJi..\N- 



537 

expended was only sixty-one thousand three hundred and eighty- 
six dollars and fifty-seven cents.* 

How was this accomplished by the Woman's Central except 
through its band of daily volunteers (the great unnamed) its 
devoted associate managers through whom came an increase of 
one hundred and thirty-eight new societies, the generosity of Ex- 
press companies, the tender self-sacrifice of country-homes, and 
the indefatigable labors of the several committees, all of whom 
felt it a privilege to work in so sacred a cause. Neither land nor 
money, nothing less than sentiment and principle, could have pro- 
duced these results. 

To the Brooklyn Relief Association the Woman's Central 
always felt deeply indebted for supplies. Its admirable President, 
Mrs. Stranahan, was in close sympathy with the association, often 
pouring in nearly half of the woollen garments it received. 

The careful dissemination of printed matter tended to sustain 
the interest of country societies. The voluminous reports of the 
Association arranged monthly by Miss Schuyler, who also con- 
tributed a series of twelve articles to the Sanitary Commission 
Bulletin, published semi-monthly by that board, the "Soldiers' 
Friend," "Nelly's Hospital," and other documents amounting in 
sixteen months to ninety-eight thousand nine hundred and eighty- 
four copies were issued by the committee "On Correspondence," 
etc. For the last two years that committee consisted of Miss L. L. 
Schuyler, chairman; Mrs. George Curtis, Mrs. David Lane, Miss 
A. Post, Miss C. Nash, H. W. Bellows, D.D. 

For the last three years, to the first members of the committee 
on "Supplies," etc., were added Miss Gertrude Stevens, the Misses 
Shaw in succession. Miss Z. T. Detmold, Mr. Isaac Bronson. 
George Roberts remained the faithful porter through the whole 
four years. 

* This does not include, of course, the value of the supplies sent to the dis- 
tributing depots of the Sanitary Commission, to Hospitals, or to the field. 
These amounted to some millions of dollars. 



538 wo:\[An's work in the civil war. 

The territory from which the Woman's Central received its 
supplies after the various branches of the Sanitary Commission 
were in full working condition, was eastern and central New 
York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and partially from northern 
ISTew Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont and Canada. Generous 
contributions were also received from European auxiliaries. 

On the 7tli of July, 1865, the final meeting of the board of 
the Woman's Central took place. Its members, though scattered 
by midsummer-heat, did not fail to appear. It was a solemn and 
touching occasion. The following resolutions, deeply felt and 
still read with emotion by its members, were then unanimously 
adopted : 

Resolved, That the Woman's Central Association of Eelief cannot dissolve 
without expressing its sense of the value and satisfaction of its connection with 
the United States Sanitary Commission, whose confidence, guidance and support 
it has enjoyed for four years past. In now breaking the formal tie that has 
bound us together, we leave unbroken the bond of perfect sympathy, gratitude 
and affection, which has grown up between us. 

Resolved, That we owe a deep debt of gratitude to our Associate Managers, 
who have so ably represented our interests in the different sections of our field 
of duty, and, that to their earnest, unflagging and patriotic exertions, much of 
the success which has followed our labors is due. 

Resolved, That to the Soldiers' Aid Societies, which form the working constit- 
uency of this Association, we offer the tribute of our profound respect and 
admiration for their zeal, constancy and patience to the end. Their boxes and 
their letters have been alike our support and our inspiration. They have kept 
our hearts hopeful, and our confidence in our cause always firm. Henceforth 
the women of America are banded in town and country, as the men are from 
city and field. We have wrought, and thought, and prayed together, as our 
soldiers have fought, and bled, and conquered, shoulder to shoulder, and from 
this hour the womanhood of our country is knit in a common bond, which the 
softening influences of Peace must not, and shall not weaken or dissolve. May 
God's blessing rest upon every Soldiers' Aid Society in the list of our contrib- 
utors, and on every individual worker in their ranks. 

Resolved, That to our band of Volunteer Aids, the ladies who, in turn, have so 
long and usefully labored in the details of our work at these rooms, we give 
our hearty and affectionate thanks, feeling that their unflagging devotion and 
cheerful presence have added largely to the efficiency and pleasure of our 



ASHOCIATrON- OF RELIEF. 539 

labors. Their record, liowever hidden, is on high, and they have in their own 
hearts the joyful testimony, that in their country's peril and need they were not 
found wanting. 

Resolved, That the thanks of this Association are due to the ladies who have, 
at difi'erent times, served upon the Board, but are no longer members of it ; and 
that we recall in this hour of parting the memory of each and all who have 
lent us the light of their countenance, and the help of their hands. Especially 
do we recognize the valuable aid rendered by the members of our Registration 
Committee, who, in the early days of this Association, superintended the train- 
ing of a band of one hundred women nurses for our army hospitals. The suc- 
cessful introduction of this system is chiefly due to the zeal and capacity of 
these ladies. 

Resolved, That in dissolving this Association, we desire to express the grati- 
tude we owe to Divine Providence for permitting the members of this Board to 
work together in so great and so glorious a cause, and upon so large and success- 
ful a scale, to maintain for so long a period, relations of such affection and 
respect, and now to part with such deep and grateful memories of our work and 
of each other. 

Resolved, That, the close of the war having enabled this Association to finish 
the work for which it was organized, the Woman's Central Association of 
Eelief for the Army and Navy of the United States, is hereby dissolved. 

The meeting then adjourned sine die. 

Samuel W. Beidgham, Secretary. 

For further and better knowledge of the Woman's Central, is 
it not written in the book of the Chronicles of the Board of the 
United States Sanitary Commission ? 



SOLDIERS' AID SOCIETY OF NORTH 
ERN OHIO. 




MOISTG the branches or centres of supply and distribu- 
tion of the United States Sanitary Commission, though 
some with a wider field and a more wealthy popula- 
tion in that field have raised a larger amount of money 
or supplies, there was none which in so small and seemingly 
barren a district proved so efficient or accomplished so much as 
the "Soldiers' Aid Society of Northern Ohio." 

This extraordinary efficiency was due almost wholly to the 
wonderful energy and business ability of its officers. The society 
which at first bore the Jiame of The Soldiers' Aid Society of 
Cleveland, was composed wholly of ladies, and was organized on 
the 20th day of April, 1861, five days after the President's pro- 
clamation calling for troops. Its officers were (exclusive of vice- 
presidents who were changed once or twice and who were not 
specially active) Mrs. B. Rouse, President, Miss- Mary Clark 
Brayton, Secretary, Miss Ellen F. Terry, Treasurer. These 
ladies continued their devotion to their work not only through 
the war, but with a slight change in their organization, to enable 
them to do" more for the crippled and disabled soldier, and to 
collect without fee or reward the bounties, back pay and pensions 
coming to the defenders of the country, has remained in existence 
and actively employed up to the present time. 

No constitution or by-laws were ever adopted, and beyond a 

540 



541 

verbal pledge to work for the soldiers while the war should last, 
and a fee of twenty-five cents monthly, no form of membership 
was prescribed and no written word held the society together to 
its latest day. Its sole cohesive power was the bond of a common 
and undying patriotism. 

In October, 1861, it was offered to the United States Sanitary 
Commission, as one of its receiving and disbursing branches, and 
the following month its name was changed to The Soldiers' Aid 
Society of Northern Ohio. Its territory was very small and not 
remarkable for wealth. It had auxiliaries in eighteen counties 
of Northeastern Ohio, (Toledo and its vicinity being connected 
with the Cincinnati Branch, and the counties farther west with 
Chicago), and a few tributaries in the counties of Michigan, New 
York, and Pennsylvania, which bordered on Ohio, of which that 
at Meadville, Pennsylvania, was the only considerable one. 

In this region, Cleveland was the only considerable city, and 
the population of the territory though largely agricultural was 
not possessed of any considerable wealth, nor was the soil remark- 
ably fertile. 

In November, 1861, the society had one hundred and twenty 
auxiliaries. A year later the number of these had increased to 
four hundred and fifty, and subsequently an aggregate of five 
hundred and twenty was attained. None of these ever seceded 
or became disaffected, but throughout the war the utmost cor- 
diality prevailed between them and the central office. 

In the five years from its organization to April, 1866, this 
society had collected and disbursed one hundred and thirty thou- 
sand four hundred and five dollars and nine cents in cash, and 
one million and three thousand dollars in stores, making a grand 
total of one million one hundred and thirty-three thousand four 
hundred and five dollars and nine cents. This amount was 
received mainly from contributions, though the excess over one 
million dollars, was mostly received from the proceeds of exhi- 
bitions, concerts, and the Northern Ohio Sanitary Fair held in 



542 

February and March, 1864. The net proceeds of this fair were 
about seventy-nine thousand dollars. 

The supplies thus contributed, as well as so much of the money 
as was not required for the other objects of the society, of which 
we shall say more presently, were forwarded to the Western 
Dep6t of the Sanitary Commission at Louisville, except in a few 
instances where they were required for the Eastern armies. The 
reception, re-packing and forwarding of this vast quantity of 
stores, as well as all the correspondence required with the auxili- 
aries and with the Western office of the Sanitary Commission, 
and the book-keeping which was necessary in consequence, 
involved a great amount of labor, but was performed with the 
utmost cheerfulness by the ladies whom we have named as the 
active officers of the society. 

Among the additional institutions or operations of this society 
connected with, yet outside of its general work of receiving and 
disbursing supplies, the most important was the "Soldiers' 
Home,'' established first on the 17th of April, 1861, as a lodging- 
room for disabled soldiers in transit, and having connected with 
it a system of meal tickets, which were given to deserving sol- 
diers of this class, entitling the holder to a meal at the dep6t 
dining hall, the tickets being redeemed monthly by the society. 
In October, 1863, the "Soldiers' Home," a building two hundred 
and thirty-five feet long and twenty-five feet wide, erected and 
furnished by funds contributed by citizens of Cleveland at the 
personal solicitation of the ladies, was opened, and was maintained 
until June 1, 1866, affording special relief to fifty-six thousand 
five hundred and twenty registered inmates, to whom were given 
one hundred and eleven thousand seven hundred and seven 
meals, and twenty-nine thousand nine hundred and seventy-three 
lodgings, at an entire cost of twenty-seven thousand four hundred 
and eight dollars and three cents. No government support was 
received for this home, and no rations drawn from the commissary 
as in most institutions of this kind. 



543 

The officers of the society gave daily personal attention to the 
Home, directing its management minutely, and the superintend- 
ent, matron and other officials were employed by them. 

The society also established a hospital directory for the soldiers 
of its territory, and recorded promptly the location and condition 
of the sick or wounded men from returns received from all the 
hospitals in which they were found ; a measure which though 
involving great labor, was the means of relieving the anxiety 
of many thousands of the friends of these men. 

In May, 1865, an Employment Agency was opened, and con- 
tinued for six months. Two hundred and six discharged soldiers, 
mostly disabled, were put into business situations by the personal 
efforts of the officers of the society. The families of the disabled 
men were cared for again and again, many of them being regular 
pensioners of the society. 

The surplus funds of the society, amounting June 1st, 1866, 
to about nine thousand dollars, were used in the settlement of all 
war claims of soldiers, bounties, back pay, pensions, etc., gratui- 
tously to the claimant. For this purpose, an agent thoroughly 
familiar with the whole business of the Pension Office, and the 
bureaus before which claims could come, was employed, and Miss 
Brayton and Miss Terry were daily in attendance as clerks at 
the office. Up to August 1st, 1866, about four hundred claims 
had been adjusted. 

The entire time of the officers of the society daily from eight 
o'clock in the morning to six and often later in the evening, was 
given to this work through the whole period of the war, and in- 
deed until the close of the summer of 1866. The ladies being 
all in circumstances of wealth, or at least of independence, no 
salary was asked or received, and no traveling expenses were ever 
charged to the Society, though the president visited repeatedly 
every part of their territory, organizing and encouraging the 
auxiliary societies, and both secretary and treasurer went more 
than once to the front of the army, and to the large general hos- 



544 woman's work in the civil war. 

pitals at Louisville, Nashville, Chattanooga, etc., with a view to 
obtaining knowledge which might benefit their cause. 

In August, 1864, a small printing office, with a hand-press, 
was attached to the rooms ; the ladies learned how to set type and 
work the press, and issued weekly bulletins to their auxiliaries to 
encourage and stimulate their efforts. For two years from Octo- 
ber, 1862, two columns were contributed to a weekly city paper by 
these indefatigable ladies for the benefit of their auxiliaries. These 
local auxiliary societies were active and loyal, but they needed 
constant encouragement, and incentives to action, to bring and 
keep them up to their highest condition of patriotic effort. 

The Sanitary Fair at Cleveland was not, as in many other 
cases, originated and organized by outside effort, for the benefit 
of the Branch of the Sanitary Commission, but had its origin, its 
organization and its whole management directly from the Sol- 
diers' Aid Society itself. 

In [N^ovember, 1865, the Ohio State Soldiers' Home was opened, 
and the Legislature having made no preparation for its immedi- 
ate wants, the Soldiers' Aid Society made a donation of five 
thousand dollars for the support of its members. 

With a brief sketch of each of these ladies, we close our his- 
tory of the Soldiers' Aid Society of Northern Ohio. 

Mrs. Eouse is a widow, somewhat advanced in life, small and 
delicately organized, and infirm in health, but of tireless energy 
and exhaustless sympathy for every form of human suffering. 
For forty years past she has been foremost in all benevolent 
movements among the ladies of Cleveland, spending most of her 
time and income in the relief of the unfortunate and suffering ; 
yet it is the testimony of all who knew her, that she is entirely 
free from all personal ambition, and all love of power or notoriety. 
Though earnestly patriotic, and ready to do all in her power for 
her country, there is nothing masculine, or as the phrase goes, 
" strong-minded " in her demeanor. She is a descendant of Oliver 
Cromwell, and has much of his energy and power of endurance, 



545 

but none of his coarseness, being remarkably unselfish, and lady- 
like in her manners. During the earlier years of the war, she 
spent much of her time in visiting the towns of the territory 
assigned to the society, and promoting the formation of local 
Soldiers' Aid Societies, and it was due to her efforts that there 
was not a town of any size in the region to which the society 
looked for its contributions which had not its aid society, or its 
Alert Glub, or both. Though plain and petite in person, she 
possessed a rare power of influencing those whom she addressed, 
and never failed to inspire them with the resolution to do all in 
their power for the country. At a later period the laborious 
duties of the home office of the society required her constant 
attention. 

Miss Mary Clark Brayton, the secretary of the society, is a 
young lady of wealth, high social position and accomplished edu- 
cation, but of gentle and modest disposition. Since the spring 
of 1861, she has isolated herself from society, and the pleasures 
of intellectual pursuits, and has given her whole time and 
thoughts to the one work of caring for the welfare of the soldiers. 
From early morning till evening, and sometimes far into the 
night, she has toiled in the rooms of the society, or elsewhere, 
superintending the receiving or despatch of supplies, conducting 
the immense correspondence of the society, preparing, setting up 
and printing its weekly bulletins, or WTiting the two columns 
weekly of matter for the Cleveland papers, on topics connected 
with the society's work, now in her turn superintending and 
purchasing supplies for the Soldiers' Home, looking out a place 
for some partially disabled soldier, or supplying the wants of 
his family; occasionally, though at rare intervals, varying her 
labors by a journey to the front, or a temporary distribution of 
supplies at some general hospital at Nashville, Huntsville, Bridge- 
port or Chattanooga, and then, having ascertained by personal 
inspection what was most necessary for the comfort and health of 
the army, returning to her work, and by eloquent and admirable 



546 woman's work in the civil war. 

appeals to the auxiliaries^ and to her personal friends in Cleve- 
land, securing and forwarding the necessary supplies so promptly, 
that as the officers of the Commission at Louisville said, it seemed 
as if she could hardly have reached Cleveland, before the supplies 
began to flow in at the Commission's warehouses at Louisville. 
Miss Brayton possesses business ability sufficient to have con- 
ducted the enterprises of a large mercantile establishment, and 
the complete system and order displayed in her transaction of 
business would have done honor to any mercantile house in the 
world. Her untiring, energy repeatedly impaired her health, but 
she has never laid down her work, and has no disposition to do 
so, while there is an opportunity of serving the defenders of her 
country. 

Miss Ellen F. Terry, the treasurer of the society, is a daughter 
of Dr. Charles Terry, a professor in the Cleveland Medical Col- 
lege. Her social position, like that of Miss Brayton, is the 
highest in that city. She is highly educated, familiar, like her 
friend Miss Brayton, with most of the modern languages of 
Europe, but especially proficient in mathematics. During the 
whole period of the war, she devoted herself as assiduously to 
the work of the society as did Mrs. Rouse and Miss Brayton. 
She kept the books of the society (in itself a great labor), made 
all its disbursements of cash, and did her whole work with a 
neatness, accuracy and despatch which would have done honor to 
any business man in the country. 'No monthly statements of 
accounts from any of the branches of the Sanitary Commission 
reporting to its Western Office at Louisville were drawn up with 
such careful accuracy and completeness as those from the Cleve- 
land branch, although in most of the others experienced and 
skilful male accountants were employed to make them up. Miss 
Terry also superintended the building of the Soldiers' Home, and 
took her turn with Miss Brayton in its management. She also 
assisted in the other labors of the society, and made occasional 
visits to the front and the hospitals. Since the close of the war 



547 

she and Miss Brayton have acted as clerks of the Free Claim 
Agency for recovering the dues of the soldiers, from the Govern- 
ment offices. 

We depart from our usual practice of excluding the writings 
of those who are the subjects of our narratives, to give the follow- 
ing sprightly description of one of the hospital trains of the 
Sanitary Commission, communicated by Miss Brayton to the 
Cleveland Herald, not so much to give our readers a specimen of 
her abilities as a writer, as to illustrate the thorough devotion to 
their patriotic work which has characterized her and her asso- 
ciates. 

ON A HOSPITAL TRAIN. 

"Riding on a rail in the ^ Sunny South,' is not the most agree- 
able pastime in the world. Don't understand me to refer to that 
favorite argumentum ad hominem which a true Southerner applies 
to all who have the misfortune to differ from him, especially to 
I^^orthern abolitionists; I simply mean that mode of traveling 
that Saxe in his funny little poem, calls so ^pleasant.' And no 
wonder ! To be whirled along at the rate of forty miles an hour, 
over a smooth road, reposing on velvet-cushioned seats, with 
backs just at the proper angle to rest a tired head, — ice- water, — 
the last novel or periodical — all that can tempt your fastidious 
taste, or help to while away the time, offered at your elbow, is 
indeed pleasant; but wo to the fond imagination that pictures to 
itself such- luxuries on a United States Military Railroad. Be 
thankful if in the crowd of tobacco-chewing soldiers you are able 
to get a seat, and grumble not if the pine boards are hard and 
narrow. Lay in a good stock of patience, for six miles an hour 
is probably the highest rate of speed you will attain, and even 
then you shudder to see on either hand strewn along the road, 
wrecks of cars and locomotives smashed in every conceivable 
manner, telling of some fearful accident or some guerrilla fight. 
These are discomforts hard to bear even when one is well and 



548 

strong; how much worse for a sick or wounded man. But 
thanks to the United States Sanitary Commission and to those 
gentlemen belonging to it, whose genius and benevolence origi- 
natedj planned, and carried it out, a hospital-train is now running 
on almost all the roads over which it is necessary to transport 
sick or wounded men. These trains are now under the control 
of Government, but the Sanitary Commission continues to fur- 
nish a great part of the stores that are used in them. My first 
experience of them was a sad one. A week before, the army had 
moved forward and concentrated near Tunnel Hill. The dull, 
monotonous rumble of army wagons as they rolled in long trains 
through the dusty street; the measured tramp of thousands of 
bronzed and war-worn veterans; the rattle and roar of the guns 
and caissons as they thundered on their mission of death; the 
glittering sheen reflected from a thousand sabres, had all passed 
by and left us in the desolated town. We lived, as it were, with 
bated breath and eager ears, our nerves tensely strung with anx- 
iet}^ and suspense waiting to catch the first sound of that coming 
strife, where we knew so many of our bravest and best must fall. 
At last came the news of that terrible fight at Buzzard's Roost 

or Rocky Face Ridge, and the evening after, in came Dr. S. 

straight ft^om the front, and said, ^ The hospital-train is at the 
dep6t, wouldn't you like to see it?' ^Of course we would,' cho- 
rused Mrs. Dr. S. and myself, and forthwith we rushed for 

our hats and cloaks, filled two large baskets with soft crackers 
and oranges, and started off. A walk of a mile brought us to 
the depot, and down in the further corner of the dep8t-yard we 
saw a train of seven or eight cars standing, apparently unoccupied. 

^ There it is,' said Dr. S. . ^Why, it looks like any ordinary 

train,' I innocently remarked, but I was soon to find out the 
difference. We chanced to see Dr. Meyers, the Surgeon-in-charge, 
on the first car into which we went, and he made us welcome to 
do and to give whatever we had for the men, and so, armed with 



soldiers' aid society of northern OHIO. 549 

authority from the ^powers that be/ we went forward with con- 
fidence. 

"Imagine a car a little wider than the ordinary one, placed on 
springs J and having on each side three tiers of berths or cots, sus- 
pended by rubber bands. These cots are so arranged as to yield 
to the motion of the car, thereby avoiding that jolting experienced 
even on the smoothest and best kept road. I didn't stop to inves- 
tigate the plan of the car then, for I saw before me, on either 
hand, a long line of soldiers, shot in almost every conceivable 
manner, their wounds fresh from the battle-field, and all were 
patient and quiet; not a groan or complaint escaped them, though 
I saw some faces twisted into strange contortions with the agony 
of their wounds. I commenced distributing my oranges right 
and left, but soon realized the smallness of my basket and the 
largeness of the demand, and sadly passed by all but the worst 
cases. In the third car that we entered we found the Colonel, 
Lieutenant-Colonel, and Adjutant of the Twenty-ninth Ohio, 
all severely wounded. We stopped and talked awhile. Mindful 
of the motto of my Commission, to give ^aid and comfort,' I 
trickled a little sympathy on them. ^ Poor fellows!' said I. ^No, 
indeed,' said they. ^We did suffer riding twenty miles' — it 
couldn't have been more than fourteen or fifteen, but a shattered 
limb or a ball in one's side lengthens the miles astonishingly — in 
those horrid ambulances to the cars. ^ We cried last night like 
children, some of us,' said a Lieutenant, ^ but we're all right now. 
This Hospital Train is a jolly thing. It goes like a cradle.' 
Seeing my sympathy w^asted, I tried another tack. ^Did you 
know that Sherman was in Dalton?' ^No!' cried the Colonel, 
and all the men who could, raised themselves up and stared at 
me with eager, questioning eyes. ^Is that so?' ^ Yes,' I replied, 
^ It is true.' ^ Then, I don't care for this little wound,' said one 
fellow, slapping his right leg, which was pierced and torn by a 
minie ball. Brave men ! How I longed to take our whole North, 
and pour out its wealth and luxury at their feet. 



550 woman's work jis' the civil war. 

"A little farther on in the car, I chanced to look down, and 
there at my feet lay a young man, not more than eighteen or nine- 
teen years old; hair tossed back from his noble white brow; long 
brown lashes lying on his cheek; face as delicate and refined as a 
girPs. I spoke to him and he opened his eyes, but could not 
answer me. I held an orange before him, and he looked a Yes; 
so I cut a hole in it and squeezed some of the juice into his mouth. 
It seemed to revive him a little, and after sitting a short time I 
left him. Soon after, they carried him out on a stretcher — poor 
fellow ! He was dying when I saw him, and I could but think 
of his mother and sisters who would have given worlds to stand 
beside him as I did. By this time it was growing dark, my 
oranges had given out, and we were sadly in the way; so we left, 
to be haunted for many a day by the terrible pictures we had 
seen on our first visit to a Hospital Train. 

^^My next experience was much pleasanter. I had the privi- 
lege of a ride on one from Chattanooga to Nashville, and an 
opportunity of seeing the plan of arrangement of the train. 
There were three hundred and fourteen sick and wounded men 
on board, occupying nine or ten cars, with the surgeon's car in 
the middle of the train. This car is divided into three compart- 
ments; at one end is the store-room where are kept the eatables 
and bedding, at the other, the kitchen; and between the two the 
surgeon's room, containing his bed, secretary, and shelves and 
pigeon holes for instruments, medicines, etc. A narrow hall con- 
nects the store-room and kitchen, and great windows or openings 
in the opposite sides of the car give a pleasant draft of air. Sit- 
ting in a comfortable arm-chair, one would not wish a j)leasanter 
mode of traveling, especially through the glorious mountains of 
East Tennessee, and further on, over the fragrant, fertile meadows, 
and the rolling hills and plains of JN'orthern Alabama and middle 
Tennessee, clothed in their fresh green garments of new cotton 
and corn. This is all charming for a passenger, but a hospital 
train is a busy place for the surgeons and nm-ses. 



551 

^'The men come on at evening/ selected from the different hos- 
pitals, according to their ability to be moved, and after having 
had their tea, the wounds have to be freshly dressed. This takes 
till midnight, perhaps longer, and the surgeon must be on the 
watch continually, for on him falls the responsibility, not only of 
the welfare of the men, but of the safety of the train. There is 
a conductor and brakeman, and for them, too, there is no rest. 
Each finds enough to do as nurse or assistant. In the morning, 
after a breakfast of delicious coffee or tea, dried beef, dried peaches, 
soft bread, cheese, etc., the wounds have to be dressed a second 
time, and again in the afternoon, a third. 

'^ In the intervals the surgeon finds time to examine individual 
cases, and prescribe especially for them, and perhaps to take a 
little rest. To fulfil the duties of surgeon in cha^rge of such a 
train, or endure the terrible strain on brain and nerves and 
muscles, requires great skill, an iron will, and a mind undaunted 
by the shadow of any responsibility or danger. All this and 
more has Dr. J. P. Barnum, who has charge of the train formerly 
running between Louisville and Nashville, but now transferred 
to the road between Nashville and Chattanooga. With a touch 
gentle as a woman, yet with manly strength and firmness, and 
untiring watchfulness and thoughtful care, he seems wholly 
devoted to the work of benefiting our sick and wounded soldiers. 
All on board the train gave him the warmest thanks. As I 
walked through the car, I heard the men say, ^we hav'n't lived 
so well since we joined the army. We are better treated than Ave 
ever were before. This is the nicest place we were ever in,' etc. 
Should the Doctor chance to see this, he will be shocked, for 
modesty, I notice, goes hand in hand with true nobility and gen- 
erosity; but I risk his wrath for the selfish pleasure that one has 
in doing justice to a good man. 

"After breakfast, in the morning, when the wounds were all 
dressed, I had the pleasure of carrying into one car a pitcher of 
delicious blackberry wine that came from the Soldiers' Aid So- 



552 

ciety of Northern Ohio, and with the advice of Dr. Yates, the 
assistant surgeon, giving it to the men. The car into which I 
went had only one tier of berths, supported like the others on 
rubber bands. Several times during the day I had an opportu- 
nity of giving some little assistance in taking care of wounded 
men, and it was very pleasant. M.y journey lasted a night and a 
day, and I think I can never again pass another twenty-four 
hours so fraught with sweet and sad memories as are connected 
with my second and last experience on a hospital train." 



NEW ENGLAND WOMEN'S AUXILIARY 
ASSOCIATION. 




MONG the branches of the United States Sanitary Com- 
mission, the Association which is named above, was 
one of the most efficient and untiring in its labors. It 
had gathered into its management, a large body of the 
most gifted and intellectual women of Boston, and its vicinity, 
women who knew how to work as well as to plan, direct and 
think. These were seconded in their efforts by a still larger num- 
ber of intelligent and accomplished women in every part of New 
England, who, as managers and directors of the auxiliaries of the 
Association, roused and stimulated by their own example and 
their eloquent appeals, the hearts of their countrywomen to earn- 
est and constant endeavour to benefit the soldiers of our National 
armies. The geographical peculiarities and connections of the 
New England States, were such that after the first year Connec- 
ticut and Rhode Island could send their supplies more readily to 
the field through New York than through Boston, and hence the 
Association from that time, had for its field of operations, only 
Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts. In these 
four States, however, it had one thousand and fifty auxiliaries, 
and during its existence, collected nearly three hundred and fif- 
teen thousand dollars in money, and fully one million, two hun- 
dred thousand dollars in stores and supplies for the work of the 
Sanitary Commission. In December, 1863, it held a Sanitary 

70 553 



554 

Fair in Boston, the net proceeds of whicli were nearly one hun- 
dred and forty-six thousand dollars. 

The first Chairman of the Executive Committee, was Mrs. D. 
Buck, and on her resignation early in 1864, Miss Abby W, May, 
an active and efficient member of the Executive Committee from 
the first was chosen Chairman. The rare executive ability dis- 
played by Miss May in this position, and her extraordinary gifts 
and influence render a brief sketch of her desirable, though her 
own modest and retiring disposition would lead her to depreciate 
her own merits, and to declare that she had done no more than 
the other members of the Association. In that coterie of gifted 
women, it is not impossible that there may have been others who 
could have done as well, but none could have done better than Miss 
May ; just as in our great armies, it is not impossible that there 
may have been Major-Generals, and perhaps even Brigadier-Gen- 
erals, who, had they been placed in command of the armies, 
might have accomplished as much as those who did lead them to 
victory. The possibilities of success, in an untried leader, may 
or may not be great ; but those who actually occupy a prominent 
position, must pay the penalty of their prominence, in the pub- 
licity which follows it. 

Miss May is a native of Boston, born in 1829, and educated in 
the best schools of her natal city. She early gave indications of 
the possession of a vigorous intellect, which was thoroughly 
trained and cultivated. Her clear and quick understanding, her 
strong good sense, active benevolence, and fearlessness in avowing 
and advocating whatever she believed to be true and right, have 
given her a powerful influence in the wide circle of her acquaint- 
ance. She embarked heart and soul in the Anti-slavery move- 
ment while yet quite young, and has rendered valuable services 
to that cause. 

At the very commencement of the war, she gave herself most 
heartily to the work of relieving the sufferings of the soldiers 
from sickness or wounds; laboring with great efficiency in the 



555 

organization and extension of the New England Women^s Aux- 
iliary Association, and in the spring and summer of 1862, going 
into the Hospital Transport Service of the Sanitary Commission, 
where her labors were arduous, but accomplished great good. 
After her return, she was prevailed upon to take the Chairman- 
ship of the Executive Committee of the Association, and repre- 
sented it at Washington, at the meeting of the delegates from the 
Branches of the Sanitary Commission. Her executive ability 
was signally manifested in her management of the affairs of the 
Association, in her rapid and accurate dispatch of business, her 
prompt and unerring judgment on all difficult questions, her 
great practical talent, and her earnest and eloquent appeals to the 
auxiliaries. Yet fearless and daring as she has ever been in her 
denunciation of wrong, and her advocacy of right, and extraor- 
dinary as are the abilities she has displayed in the management 
of an enterprise for which few men would have been competent, 
the greatest charm of her character is her unaffected modesty, 
and disposition to esteem others better than herself. To her 
friends she declared that she had made no sacrifices in the work, 
none really worthy of the name — while there were abundance of 
women who had, but who were and must remain nameless and 
unknown. What she had done had been done from inclination 
and a desire to serve and be useful in her day, and in the great 
struggle, and had been a recreation and enjoyment. 

To a lady friend who sought to win from her some incidents 
of her labors for publication, she wrote : 

" The work in New England has been conducted ^yith so much 
simplicity, and universal co-operation, that there have been no 
persons especially prominent in it. Rich and poor, wise and 
simple, cultivated and ignorant, all — ^people of all descriptions, 
all orders of taste, every variety of habit, condition, and circum- 
stances, joined hands heartily in the beginning, and have worked 
together as equals in every respect. There has been no chance 
for individual prominence. Each one had some power or quality 



556 

desirable in the great work ; and she gave what she could. In 
one instance^ it was talent, in another, money, — in another, judg- 
ment, — in another, time, — and so on. Where all gifts were 
needed, it would be impossible to say what would make any per- 
son prominent, with this one exception. It was necessary that 
some one should be at the head of the work : and this place it 
was my blessed privilege to fill. But it was only an accidental 
prominence ; and I should regret more than I can express to you, 
to have this accident of position single me out in any such man- 
ner as you propose ; from the able, devoted, glorious women all 
about me, whose sacrifices, and faithfulness, and nobleness, I can 
hardly conceive of, much less speak of and never approach to. 

" As far as I personally am concerned, I would rather your no- 
tice of our part of the work should be of ^ New England wo- 
men.' We shared the privileges of the work, — not always 
equally, that would be impossible. But we stood side by side — 
through it all, as New England women ; and if we are to be 
remembered hereafter, it ought to be under that same good old 
title, and in one goodly company. 

" When I begin to think of individual cases, I grow full of ad- 
miration, and wish I could tell you of many a special woman ; 
but the number soon becomes appalling, — your book would be 
overrun, and all, or most of those who would have been omit- 
ted, might well have been there too.'' 

In the same tone of generous appreciation of the labors of 
others, and desire that due honor should be bestowed upon all. Miss 
May, in her.final Report of the New England Women's Auxili- 
ary Association, gives utterance to the thanks of the Executive 
Committee to its fellow- workers : 

" We wish we could speak of all the elements that have con- 
spired to our success in New England; but they are too nume- 
rous. From the representatives of the United States Government 
here, who remitted the duties upon soldiers' garments sent to us 
from Nova Scotia, down to the little child, diligently sewing 



557 

with tiny fingers upon the soldier's comfort-bag, the co-operation 
has been almost universal. Churches, of all denominations, have 
exerted their influence for us; many schools have made special 
efforts in our behalf; the directors of railroads, express companies, 
telegraphs, and newspapers, and gentlemen of the business firms 
with whom we have dealt, have befriended us most liberally; 
and private individuals, of all ages, sexes, colors, and conditions, 
have aided us in ways that we cannot enumerate, that no one really 
knows but themselves. They do not seek our thanks, but we 
would like to offer them. Their service has been for the soldiers' 
sake; but the way in which they have rendered it has made us 
personally their debtors, beyond the power of w^ords to express." 

One of the most efficient auxiliaries of the New England 
Women's Auxiliary Association, from the thoroughly loyal spirit 
it manifested, and the persistent and patient labor which charac- 
terized its course was the Boston Sewing Circle, an organization 
started in November, 1862, and which numbered thenceforward 
to the end of the war from one hundred and fifty to two hundred 
workers. This Sewing Circle raised twenty-one thousand seven 
hundred and seventy-eight dollars in money, (about four thou- 
sand dollars of it for the Refugees in Western Tennessee), and 
made up twenty-one thousand five hundred and ninety-two arti- 
cles of clothing, a large part of them of flannel, but including also 
shirts, drawers, etc., of cotton. 

Its officers from first to last were Mrs. George Ticknor, Presi- 
dent; Miss Ira E. Loring, Vice-President; Mrs. G. H. Shaw, 
Secretary; Mrs. Martin Brimmer, Treasurer. A part of these 
ladies, together with some others had for more than a year pre- 
vious been engaged in similar labors, at first in behalf of the 
Second Regiment of Massachusetts Infantry, and afterward for 
other soldiers. This organization of which Mrs. George Ticknor 
was President, Miss Ticknor, Secretary, and Mrs. W. B. Rogers, 
Treasurer, raised three thousand five hundred and forty-four dol- 
lars in money, and sent to the army four thousand nine hundred 



558 

and sixty-nine articles of clothing of which one-third were of 
flannel. 

Another "Boston notion," and a very excellent notion it was, 
was the organization of the Ladies^ Industrial Aid Association, 
which we believe, but are not certain, was in some sort an auxi- 
liary of the New England Women's Auxiliary Association. This 
society was formed in the beginning of the war and proposed first 
to furnish well made clothing to the soldiers, and second to give 
employment to their families, though it was not confined to these, 
but furnished work also to some extent to poor widows with 
young children, who had no near relatives in the army. In this 
enterprise were enlisted a large number of ladies of education, 
refinement, and high social position. During four successive 
winters, they carried on their philanthropic work, from fifteen to 
twenty of them being employed during most of the forenoons 
of each week, in preparing the garments for the sewing women, 
or in the thorough and careful inspection of those which were 
finished. From nine hundred to one thousand women were 
constantly supplied with work, and received in addition to the 
contract prices, (the ladies performing their labor without com- 
pensation) additional payment, derived from donations for increas- 
ing their remuneration. The number of garments (mostly shirts 
and drawers) made by the employes of this association in the 
four years, was three hundred and forty-six thousand seven hun- 
dred and fifteen, and the sum of twenty thousand thirty-three 
dollars and seventy-eight cents raised by donation, was paid as 
additional wages to the workwomen. The association of these 
poor women for so long a period with ladies of cultivation and 
refinement, under circumstances in which they could return a fair 
equivalent for the money received, and hence were not in the 
position of applicants for charity, could not fail to be elevating 
and improving, while the ladies themselves learned the lesson 
that as pure and holy a patriotism inspired the hearts of the 
humble and lowly, as was to be found among the gifted and 



cultivated. We regret that we cannot give the names of the 
ladies who initiated and sustained this movement. Many of 
them were conspicuous in other works of patriotism and benevo- 
lence during the war, and some found scope for their earnest 
devotion to the cause in camp and hospital, and some gave vent 
to their patriotic emotion in battle hymns which will live through 
all coming time. Of these as of thousands of others in all the 
departments of philanthropy connected with the great struggle, 
it shall be said, ^' They have done what they could/' 



NORTHWESTERN SANITARY COM- 
MISSION. 




HEN the United States Sanitary Commission was first 
organized, though its members and officers had but 
little idea of the vast influence it was destined to exert 
on the labors which were before it, they wisely resolved 
to make it a National affair, and accordingly selected some of 
their corporate members from the large cities of the West. The 
Honorable Mark Skinner, and subsequently E. B. McCagg, Esq., 
and E. W. Blatchford, were chosen as the associate members of 
the Commission for Chicago. The Commission expected much 
from the Northwest, both from its earnest patriotism, and its large- 
handed liberality. Its selection of associates was eminently judi- 
cious, and these very soon after their election, undertook the 
establishment of a branch Commission for collecting and forward- 
ing supplies, and more effectively organizing the liberality of the 
Northwest, that its rills and streams of beneficence, concen- 
trated in the great city of the Lakes, might flow thence in a 
mighty stream to the armies of the West. Public meetings were 
held, a branch of the United States Sanitary Commission with its 
rooms, its auxiliaries and its machinery of collection and distribu- 
tion put in operation, and the office management at first entrusted 
to that devoted and faithful worker in the Sanitary cause, Mrs. 
Eliza Porter. The work grew in extent as active operations were 
undertaken in our armies, and early in 1862, the associates finding 
Mrs. Porter desirous of joining her husband in ministrations of 

660 



If ORTH WESTERN SANITARY COMMISSION". 561 

mercy at the front, entrusted the charge of the active labors of 
the Commission, its correspondence, the organization of auxiliary 
aid societies, the issuing of appeals for money and supplies, the 
forwarding of stores, the employment and location of women 
nurses, and the other multifarious duties of so extensive an institu- 
tion, to two ladies of Chicago, ladies who had both given practical 
evidence of their patriotism and activity in the cause, — Mrs. A. 
H. Hoge and Mrs. M. A. Livermore. The selection was wisely 
made. No more earnest workers were found in any department 
of the Sanitary Commission's field, and their eloquence of pen and 
voice, the magnetism of their personal presence, their terse and 
vigorously written circulars appealing for general or special sup- 
plies, their projection and management of two great sanitary fairs, 
and their unwearied efforts to save the western armies from the 
fearful perils of scurvy, entitle them to especial prominence in our 
record of noble and patriotic women. The amount of money and 
supplies sent from this branch, collected from its thousand auxili- 
aries and its two great fairs, has not been up to this time, defini- 
tively estimated, but it is known to have exceeded one million of 
dollars. 

This record of the labors of these ladies during the war would 
be incomplete without allusion to the fact that they were the 
prime movers in the establishment of a Soldiers' Home, in Chi- 
cago, and were, until after the war ended, actively identified with 
it. They early foresaw that this temporary resting-place, which 
became like 'Hhe shadow of a great rock in a weary land" to 
tens of thousands of soldiers, going to and returning from the 
camp, and hospital, and battle-field, would eventually crystallize 
into a permanent home for the disabled and indigent of Illinois' 
brave men — and in all their calculations for it, they took its grand 
future into account. That future which they foresaw, has become 
a verity, and nowhere in the United States is there a pleasanter, 
or more convenient, or more generously supported Soldiers' Home 

than in Chicago, standing on the shores of Lake Michigan. 
71 



MRS. A. H. HOGE. 






ERHAPS among all who have labored for the sol- 
dier, during the late war, among the women of our 
country, no name is better known that of Mrs. A. H. 
Hoge, the subject of this sketch. From the beginning 
until the successful close of the war, alike cheerful, ardent, and 
reliant, in its darkest, as in its brightest days, Mrs. Hoge dedi- 
cated to the service of her country and its defenders, all that she 
had to bestow, and became widely known all over the vast sphere 
of her operations, as one of the most faithful and tireless of 
workers ; wise in council, strong in judgment, earnest in action. 

Mrs. Hoge is a native of the city of Philadelphia, and was 
the daughter of George D. Blaikie, Esq., an East India shipping 
merchant — "a man of spotless character, and exalted reputation, 
whose name is held in reverence by many still living there.'' 

Mrs. Hoge was educated at the celebrated seminary of John 
Brewer, A. M., (a graduate of Harvard University) who founded 
the first classical school for young ladies in Philadelphia, and 
which was distinguished from all others, by the name of the 
Young Ladies' College. She graduated with the first rank in 
her class, and afterward devoting much attention, with the 
advantage of the best instruction, to music, and other accom- 
plishments, she soon excelled in the former. At an early age she 
became a member of the Old School Presbyterian Church, with 
which she still retains her connection, her husband being a ruling 
elder in the same church. 

662 



MES. A. H. HOGE. 663 

In her twentieth year she was married to Mr. A. H. Hoge, a 
merchant of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, where she resided fourteen 
years. At the end of that period she removed to Chicago, Illi- 
nois, where she has since dwelt. 

Mrs. Hoge has been the mother of thirteen children, five of 
whom have passed away before her. One of these, the Eev. 
Thomas Hoge, was a young man of rare endowments and prom- 
ise. 

As before stated, from the very beginning of the war, Mrs. 
Hoge identified herself with the interests of her country. Two 
of her sons immediately entered the army, and she at once com- 
menced her unwearied personal services for the sick and wounded 
soldiers. 

At first she entered only into that work of supply in which so 
large a portion of the loyal women of the North labored more or 
less continuously all through the war. But the first public act of 
her life as a Sanitary Agent, was to visit, at the request of the 
Chicago branch of the United States Sanitary Commission, the 
hospitals at Cairo, Mound City and St. Louis. 

Of her visit to one of these hospitals she subsequently related 
the following incidents: 

"The first great hospital I visited was Mound City, twelve 
miles from Cairo. It contained twelve hundred beds, furnished 
with dainty sheets, and pillows and shirts, from the Sanitary 
Commission, and ornamented with boughs of fresh apple blos- 
soms, placed there by tender female nurses to refresh the languid 
frames of their mangled inmates. As I took my slow and solemn 
walk through this congregation of suffering humanity, I was 
arrested by the bright blue eyes, and pale but dimpled cheek, of 
a boy of nineteen summers. I perceived he was bandaged like a 
mummy, and could not move a limb; but still he smiled. The 
nurse who accompanied me said, ^ We call this boy our miracle. 
Five weeks ago, he was shot down at Donelson; both legs and 
arms shattered. To-day, with great care, he has been turned for 



564 woman's work in the civil war. 

the first time, and never a murmur has escaped his lips, but grate- 
ful words and pleasant looks have cheered us/ Said I to the 
smiling boy, some absent mother's pride, ^How long did you lie 
on the field after being shot?' ^From Saturday morning till Sun- 
day evening,' he replied, ^and then I was chopped out, for I had 
frozen feet.' 'How did it happen that you were left so long?' 
'Why, you see,' said he, 'they couldn't stop to bother with us, 
because they had to taJce the fort J 'But,' said I, 'did you not feel 
'twas cruel to leave you to suffer so long?' 'Of course not! how 
could they help it? They had to take the fort, and when they did, 
we forgot our sufferings, and all over the battle-field went up 
cheers from the wounded, even from the dying. Men that had 
but one arm raised that, and voices so weak that they sounded 
like children's, helped to swell the sound.' ' Did you suffer much ?' 
His brow contracted, as he said, 'I don't like to think of that; 
but never mind, the doctor tells me I won't lose an arm or a leg, 
and I'm going back to have another chance at them. There's 
one thing I can't forget though," said he, as his sunny brow grew 
dark, 'Jem and I (nodding at the boy in the adjoining cot) lived 
on our father's neighboring farms in Illinois; we stood beside 
each other and fell together. As he knows, we saw fearful sights 
that day. We saw poor wounded boys stripped of their clothing. 
They cut our's off, when every movement was torture. When 
some resisted, they Avere pinned to the earth with bayonets, and 
left writhing like worms, to die by inches. I can't forgive the 
devils for that.' ' I fear you've got more than you bargained for.' 
'Not a bit of it; we went in for better or worse, and if we got 
worse, we must not complain.' Thus talked the beardless boy, 
nine months only from his mother's wing. As I spoke, a moan, 
a rare sound in a hospital, fell on my ear. I turned, and saw a 
French boy quivering with agony and crying for help. Alas ! he 
had been wounded, driven several miles in an ambulance, with 
his feet projecting, had them frightfully frozen, and the surgeon 
had just decided the discolored, useless members must be ampu- 



MES. A. H. HOGE. 565 

tated, and the poor boy was begging for the operation. Beside 
him, lay a stalwart man, with fine face, the fresh blood staining 
his bandages, his dark, damp hair clustering round his marble 
forehead. He extended his hand feebly and essayed to speak, as 
I bent over him, but speech had failed him. He was just brought 
in from a gunboat, where he had been struck with a piece of shell, 
and was slipping silently but surely into eternity. Two days 
afterward I visited Jefferson Barracks Hospital. In passing 
through the wards, I noticed a woman seated beside the cot of a 
youth, apparently dying. He was insensible to all around; she 
seemed no less so. Her face was bronzed and deeply lined with 
care and suffering. Her eyes were bent on the ground, her arms 
folded, her features rigid as marble. I stood beside her, but she 
did not notice me. I laid my hand upon her shoulder, but she 
heeded me not. I said ^Is this young man a relative of yours?' 
]N"o answer came. ^ Can't I help you?' With a sudden start that 
electrified me, her dry eyes almost starting from the sockets and 
her voice husky with agony, she said, pointing her attenuated 
finger at the senseless boy, ^ He is the last of seven sons — six have 
died in the army, and the doctor says he must die to-night.' The 
flash of life passed from her face as suddenly as it came, her arms 
folded over her breast, she sank in her chair, and became as before, 
the rigid impersonation of agony. As I passed through another 
hospital ward, I noticed a man whose dejected figure said plainly, 
^he had turned his face to the wall to die.' His limb had been 
amputated, and he had just been told his doom. Human nature 
rebelled. He cried out, ^ I am willing to die, if I could but see 
my wife and children once more.' In the silence that followed 
this burst of agony, the low voice of a noble woman, who gave 
her time and abundant means to the sick and wounded soldiers, 
was heard in prayer for him. The divine influence overcame his 
struggling heart, and as she concluded, he said, 'Thy will, O God, 
be done!' ^'Tis a privilege, even thus, to die for one's country.' 



566 

Before tlie midnight hour he was at rest. The vacant bed told 
the story next morning.'^ 

The object of these visits was to examine those hospitals which 
were under the immediate supervision of the Branch, and report 
their condition, also to investigate the excellent mode of working 
of the finely conducted, and at that time numerous hospitals in 
St. Louis. This report was made and acted upon, and was the 
means of introducing decided and much needed reforms into simi- 
lar institutions. 

The value of Mrs. Hoge's counsel, and the fruits of her great 
experience of life were generally acknowledged. In the several 
councils of women held in Washington, she tool^ a prominent part, 
and was always listened to with the greatest respect and attention 
— not by any means lessened after her wide relations with the 
Sanitary Commission, and her special experience of its work, had 
become known in the following years. 

Mrs. Hoge was accompanied to Washington, when attending 
the Women's Council in 1862, by her friend and fellow-laborer, 
Mrs. M. A. Livermore, of Chicago. After the return of these 
ladies they immediately commenced the organization of the North- 
west for sanitary labor, being appointed agents of the Northwestern 
Sanitary Commission, and devoting their entire time to this 
work. 

They opened a correspondence with leading women in all the 
cities and prominent towns of the Northwest. They prepared 
and circulated great numbers of circulars, relating to the mode 
and necessity of the concentrated efforts of the Aid Societies, and 
they visited in person very many towns and large villages, call- 
ing together audiences of women, and telling them of the hard- 
ships, sufferings and heroism of the soldiers, which they had 
themselves witnessed, and the pressing needs of these men, which 
were to be met by the supplies contributed by, and the work of 
loyal women of the North. They thus stimulated the enthusiasm 
of the women to the highest point, greatly increased the number 



MRS. A. H. HOGE. 567 



/ 



of Aid Societies, and taught them how, by systematizing their 
/ efforts, they could render the largest amount of assistance, as well 
as the most important, to the objects of the Sanitary Commis- 
sion. 

The eloquence and pathos of these appeals has never been sur- 
passed; and it is no matter of wonder that they should have 
opened the hearts and purses of so many thousands of the lis- 
teners. "But for these noble warriors,'^ Mrs. Hoge would say, 
" v/ho have stood a living wall between us and destruction, where 
would have been our schools, our colleges, our churches, our pro- 
perty, our government, our lives? Southern soil has been watered 
with their blood, the Mississippi fringed with their graves, meas- 
ured by acres instead of numbers. The shadow of death has passed 
over almost every household, and left desolate hearth-stones and 
vacant chairs. Thousands of mothers, wives and sisters at home 
have died and made no sign, while their loved ones have been 
hidden in Southern hospitals, prisons and graves — the separation, 
thank God, is short, the union eternal. I have only a simple 
story of these martyred heroes to tell you. I have been privileged 
to visit a hundred thousand of them in hospitals; meekly and 
cheerfully lying there, that you and I may be enabled to meet 
here, in peace and comfort to-day. 

" Could I, by the touch of a magician's wand, pass before you 
in solemn review, this army of sufferers, you would say a tithe 
cannot be told.'' 

And then with simple and effective pathos she would proceed 
to tell of incidents which she had witnessed, so touching, that long 
ere she had concluded her entire audience would be in tears. 

By two years of earnest and constant labor in this field, these 
ladies succeeded in adding to the packages sent to the Sanitary 
Commission, fifty thousand, mostly gifts directly from the Aid 
Societies, but in part purchased with money given. In addition 
to this, over four hundred thousand dollars came into the treasury 
through their efforts. 



568 

Early in 1863, Mrs. Hoge, in company with Mrs. Colt of Mil- 
waukee, at the request of the Sanitary Commission, left Chicago for 
Vicksburg, with a large quantity of sanitary stores. The defeat 
of Sherman in his assault upon that city, had just taken place, 
and there was great want and suffering in the army. The boat 
upon which these ladies were traveling, was however seized as a 
military transport at Columbus, and pressed into the fleet of 
General Gorman, which was just starting for the forts at the 
mouth of the White River. 

General Fisk, whose headquarters were upon the same boat, 
accorded to these ladies the best accommodations, and every 
facility for carrying out their work, which proved to be greatly 
needed. Their stores were found to be almost the only ones in the 
fleet, composed of thirty steamers filled with fresh troops, whose 
ranks were soon thinned by sickness, consequent upon the expo- 
sures and fatigues of the campaign. 

Their boat became a refuge for the sick of General Fisk's 
brigade, to his honor be it said, and these ladies had the privilege 
of nursing hundreds of men during this expedition, and un- 
doubtedly saved many valuable lives. 

Early in the following spring, and only ten days after her 
return to Chicago, from the expedition mentioned above, Mrs. 
Hoge was again summoned to Vicksburg, opposite which, at 
Young's Point, the army under General Grant was lying and 
engaged, among other operations against this celebrated strong- 
hold, in the attempt to turn the course of the river into a canal 
dug across the point. Scurvy was prevailing to a very considera- 
ble extent among the men, who were greatly in need of the sup- 
plies which accompanied her. Here she remained two weeks, 
and had the pleasure of distributing these supplies, and witness- 
ing much benefit from their use. Her headquarters were upon 
the sanitary boat. Silver Wave, and she received constant support 
and aid from Generals Grant and Sherman, and from Admiral 
Porter, who placed a tug boat at her disposal, in order that she 



MES. A. H. HOGE. 569 

might visit the camps and hospitals which were totally inaccessi- 
ble in any other way, owing to the impassable character of the 
roads during the rainy season. Having made a tour of all the 
hospitals, and ascertained the condition of the sick, and of the 
army generally, she returned to the North, and reported to the 
Sanitary Commission the extent of that insidious army foe, the 
scurvy. They determined to act promptly and vigorously. Mrs. 
Hoge and Mrs. Livermore, as representatives of the Northwestern 
Sanitary Commission, by unremitting exertions, through the 
press and by circulars, and aided by members of the Commission, 
and by the noble Board of Trade of Chicago, succeeded in col- 
lecting, and in sending to the army, in the course of three weeks, 
over one thousand bushels of potatoes and onions, which reached 
them, were apportioned to them, and proved, as was anticipated, and 
has been universally acknowledged, the salvation of the troops. 

Again, in the following June, on the invitation of General 
Fuller, Adjutant-General of the State of Illinois, Mrs. Hoge 
visited Vicksburg, on the Steamer City of Alton, which was de- 
spatched by Governor Yates, to bring home the sick and wounded 
Illinois soldiers. She remained till shortly before the surrender, 
which took place on the fourth of July, and during this time 
visited the entire circle of Hospitals, as well as the rifle-pits, 
where she witnessed scenes of thrilling interest, and instances of 
endurance and heroism beyond the power of pen to describe. 
She thus describes some of the incidents of this visit : 
" The long and weary siege of Vicksburg, had continued many 
months previous to the terrific assaults of our brave army on the 
fortifications in the rear of that rebel stronghold. On the 19th 
and 2 2d of May, were made those furious attacks, up steep ac- 
clivities, in the teeth of bristling fortifications, long lines of rifle- 
pits, and sharp-shooters who fringed the hill-tops, and poured 
their murderous fire into our advancing ranks. It would seem 
impossible that men could stand, much less advance, under such 
a galling fire. They were mowed down as wheat before the sickle, 
72 



570 

but they faltered not. The vacant places of the fallen were m- 
stantly filled, and inch by inch they gained the heights of Yicks- 
burg. When the precipice was too steep for the horses to draw 
up the artillery, our brave boys did the work themselves, and 
then fought and conquered. When they had gained the topmost 
line of rifle-pits, they entered in and took possession; and when 
I made my last visit to the Army of the Mississippi, there they were 
ensconced as conies in the rock, enduring the heat of a vertical 
sun, and crouching, like beasts of prey, to escape the rebel bul- 
lets from the earthworks, almost within touching distance. The 
fierce and bloody struggle had filled long lines of field-hospitals 
with mangled victims, whose sufferings were soothed and relieved 
beyond what I could have conceived possible, and it rejoiced my 
heart to see there the comforts and luxuries of the Sanitary Com- 
mission. The main body of the army lay encamped in the val- 
leys, at the foot of the rifle-pits, and spread its lines in a semi- 
circle to a distance of fourteen miles. The health of the army 
was perfect, its spirit jubilant. They talked of the rebels as 
prisoners, as though they were guarding them, and answered 
questions implying doubt of success, with a scornful laugh, say- 
ing, ^ Why, the boys in the rear could whip Johnston, and we not 
know it; and we could take Vicksburg if we chose, and not dis- 
turb them.' Each regiment, if not each man, felt competent for 
the work. One glorious day in June, accompanied by an officer 
of the 8th Missouri, I set out for the rifle-pits. When I reached 
them, I found the heat stifling; and as I bent to avoid the whiz- 
zing minies, and the falling branches of the trees, cut off by an 
occasional shell, I felt that war was a terrible reality. The in- 
tense excitement of the scene, the manly, cheerful bearing of the 
veterans, the booming of the cannon from the battlements, and 
the heavy mortars that were ever and anon throwing their huge 
iron balls into Vicksburg, and the picturesque panorama of the 
army encamped below, obliterated all sense of personal danger or 
fatigue. After a friendly talk with the men in the extreme front, 



MES. A. H. HOGE. 571 

and a peep again and again through the loop-holes, watched and 
fired upon continually, by the wary foe, I descended to the second 
ledge, where the sound of music reached us. We followed it 
quickly, and in a few moments stood behind a rude litter of 
boughs, on which lay a gray-haired soldier, face downward, with 
a comrade on either side. They did not perceive us, but sang on 
the closing line of the verse : 

* Come humble sinner in whose breast 
A thousand thoughts revolve ; 
Come with thy sins and fears oppressed, 
And make this last resolve.' 

I joined in the second verse ; 

*ni go to Jesus, though my sins 

Have like a mountain rose, 
I know His courts, I'll enter in, 
Whatever may oppose.' 

In an instant, each man turned and would have stopped, but I 
sang on with moistened eyes, and they continued. At the close, 
one burst out, ^ Why, ma'am, where did you come from ? Did 
you drop from heaven into these rifle-pits ? You are the first 
lady we have seen here,' and then the voice was choked with 
tears. I said, ^I have come from your friends at home to see 
you, and bring messages of love and honor. I have come to 
bring you the comforts that we owe you, and love to give. IVe 
come to see if you receive what they send you.' 'Do they think 
so much of us as that? Why, boys, we can fight another year 
on that, can't we?' 'Yes! yes!' they cried, and almost every 
hand was raised to brush away the tears. 'Why, boys,' said I, 
' the women at home don't think of much else but the soldiers. 
If they meet to sew, 'tis for you ; if they have a good time, 'tis 
to gather money for the Sanitary Commission; if they meet to 
pray, 'tis for the soldiers; and even the little children, as they 
kneel at their mother's knees to lisp their good-night prayers, say, 



572 

God bless the soldiers.' A crowd of eager listeners had gathered 
from their hiding-places, as birds from the rocks. Instead of 
cheers as usual, I could only hear an occasional sob and feel 
solemn silence. The gray-haired veteran drew from his breast- 
pocket a daguerreotype, and said, ^ Here are my wife and daugh- 
ters. I think any man might be proud of them, and they all 
work for the soldiers.' And then each man drew forth the inev- 
itable daguerreotype, and held it for me to look at, with pride 
and affection. There were aged mothers and sober matrons, 
bright-eyed maidens and laughing cherubs, all carried next these 
brave hearts, and cherished as life itself. Blessed art! It seems 
as though it were part of God's preparation work, for this long, 
cruel war. These mute memorials of home and its loved ones 
have proved the talisman of many a tempted heart, and the 
solace of thousands of suffering, weary veterans. I had much 
to do, and prepared to leave. I said, ^ Brave men, farewell ! 
When I go home, I'll tell them that men that never flinch before 
a foe, sing hymns of praise in the rifle-pits of Vicksburg. I'll 
tell them that eyes that never weep for their own suffering, over- 
flow at the name of home and the sight of the pictures of their 
wives and children. They'll feel more than ever that such men 
cannot be conquered, and that enough cannot be done for them.' 
Three cheers for the women at home, and a grasp of multitudes 
of hard, honest hands, and I turned away to visit other regi- 
ments. The ofiicer who was with me, grasped my hand ; 
^ Madam,' said he, ^promise me you'll visit my regiment to-mor- 
row — 'twould be worth a victory to them. You don't know 
what good a lady's visit to the army does. These men whom 
you have seen to-day, will talk of your visit for six months to 
come. Around the camp fires, in the rifle-pits, in the dark 
nights or on the march, they will repeat your words, describe 
your looks, your voice, your size, your dress, and all agree in one 
respect, that you look like an angel, and exactly like each man's 
wife or mother.' Such reverence have our soldiers for upright. 



MRS. A. H. HOGE. 573 

tender-hearted women. In the valley beneath, just having ex- 
changed the front line of rifle-pits, with the regiment now occu- 
pying it, encamped my son's regiment. Its ranks had been fear- 
fully thinned by the terrible assaults of the 19th and 21st of 
May, as they had formed the right wing of the line of battle on 
that fearful day. I knew most of them personally, and as they 
gathered round me and inquired after home and friends, I could 
but look in sadness for many familiar faces, to be seen no more 
on earth. I said, ^ Boys, I was present when your colors were 
presented to you by the Board of Trade. I heard your colonel 
pledge himself that you would bring those colors home or cover 
them with your blood, as well as glory. I want to see them, if 
you have them still, after your many battles.' With great alac- 
rity, the man in charge of them ran into an adjoining tent, and 
brought them forth, carefully wrapped in an oil-silk covering. 
He drew it ofP and flung the folds to the breeze. ^ What does 
this mean?' I said. ^How soiled and tattered, and rent and 
faded they look — I should not know them.' The man who held 
them said, ^Why, ma'am, 'twas the smoke and balls did that.' 
*Ah ! so it must have been,' I said. ^ Well, you have covered 
them with glory, but how about the blood !' A silence of a min- 
ute followed, and then a low voice said, ^ Four were shot down 
holding them — two are dead, and two in the hospital.' ^Yerily, 
you have redeemed your pledge,' I said solemnly. ^Now, boys, 
sing Kally round the Flag, Boys !' — and they did sing it. As it 
echoed through the valley, as we stood within sight of the green 
sward that had been reddened with the blood of those that had 
fought for and upheld it, meth ought the angels might pause to 
hear it, for it was a sacred song — the song of freedom to the 
captive, of hope to the oppressed of all nations. Since then, it 
seems almost profane to sing it with thoughtlessness or frivolity. 
After a touching farewell, I stepped into the ambulance, sur- 
rounded by a crowd of the brave fellows. The last sound that 
reached my ears was cheers for the Sanitary Commission, and the 



574 

womeD at home. I soon reached the regimental hospital, where 
lay the wounded color-bearers. As I entered the tent, the sur- 
geon met me and said, ^I'm so glad youVe come, for R 

has been calling for you all day.' As I took his parched, fever- 
ish hand, he said, ^ Oh ! take me home to my wife and little ones 
to die.' There he lay, as noble a specimen of vigorous manhood 
as I had ever looked upon. His great, broad chest heaved with 
emotion, his dark eyes were brilliant with fever, his cheeks 
flushed with almost the hue of health, his rich brown hair clus- 
tering in soft curls over his massive forehead, it was difficult to 
realize that he was entering the portals of eternity. I walked 
across the tent to the doctor, and asked if he could go with me. 
He shook his head, and said before midnight he would be at rest. 
I shrank from his eager gaze as I approached him. ^ What does 
he say?' he asked quickly. ^ You can't be moved.' The broad 
chest rose and fell, his whole frame quivered. There was a pause 
of a few minutes. He spoke first, and said, ^Will you take my 
message to her?' *I Avill,' I said, 4f I go five hundred miles to 
do it.' ^Take her picture from under my pillow, and my chil- 
dren's also. Let me see it once more.' As I held them for him, 
he looked earnestly, and then said, ^Tell her not to fret about 
me, for we shall meet in heaven. Tell her 'twas all right that I 
came. I don't regret it, and she must not. Tell her to train 
these two little boys, that we loved so well, to go to heaven to us, 
and tell her to bear my loss like a soldier's wife and a Christian.' 
He was exhausted by the effort. I sat beside him till his con- 
sciousness was gone, repeating God's precious promises. As the 
sun went to rest that night, he slept in his Father's bosom." 

Early in January, 1864, another Council of women connected 
wih the Branch Commissions, Aid Societies, and general work 
of Supply, assembled in Washington, and was in session three 
days. Mrs. Hoge, was again a Delegate, and in relating the re- 
sults of her now very large experience, helped greatly the bene- 
ficial results of the Council, and harmonized all the views and 



MRS. A. H. HOGE. 575 

action of the various branches. As before, she was listened to 
with deference and attention, and we find her name mentioned in 
the most appreciative manner in the Reports of the meeting. Her 
remarks in regard to the value of free use of the Press, and of 
advertising, in the collection of supplies for the Army, stimulated 
the Commission to renewed effort in this direction, which they 
had partially abandoned under the censorious criticism of some 
portion of the public, who believed the money thus expended to 
be literally thrown away. The result was, instead, a very large 
increase of supplies. 

In the two great Sanitary Fairs, which were held in Chicago, 
the efforts of Mrs. Hoge were unwearied from the inception of 
the idea until the close of the successful realization. Much of 
this success may be directly traced to her — her practical talent, 
great experience in influencing the minds and action of others, 
and sound judgment, as well as good taste, producing thus their 
natural results. The admirable conduct of these fairs, and the 
large amounts raised by them, are matters of history. 

In an address delivered at a meeting of ladies in Brooklyn, 
New York, in March, 1865, Mrs. Hoge thus spoke of her work 
and that of the women, who like her, had given themselves to 
the duty of endeavoring to provide for the sick and suffering 
soldier : 

"The women of the land, with swelling hearts and uplifted 
eyes asked ^Lord, what wilt thou have us to do?' The mar- 
vellous organization of the United States Sanitary Commission, 
with its various modes of heavenly activity, pointed out the way, 
saying ' The men must fight, the women must work, this is the 
way, follow me.' In accej)ting this call, there has been no reser- 
vation. Duty has been taken up, in whatever shape presented, 
nothing refused that would soothe a sorrow, staunch a wound, or 
heal the sickness of the humblest soldier in the ranks. Some 
have drifted into positions entirely new and heretofore avoided. 
They have gone forth from the bosom of their families, to visit 



576 woman's work in the civil wae. 

hospitals, camps, and battle-fields; some even to appear as we do 
before you to-day, to plead for aid for our sick and wounded sol- 
diers suffering and dying that we may live. The memory of their 
heroism is inspiring — the recollection of their patience and long- 
suffering is overwhelming. They form the most striking human 
exemplification of divine meekness and submission, the world has 
ever seen, and bring to mind continually the passage, ^He is 
brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her 
shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.'" 

During the continuance of her labors, Mrs. Hoge was fre- 
quently the recipient of costly and elegant gifts, as testimonials 
of the respect and gratitude with which her exertions were viewed. 

After a visit to the Ladies' Aid Society, of West Chester, Penn- 
sylvania, she was presented by them with a testimonial, beauti- 
fully engrossed upon parchment, surmounted by an exquisitely 
painted Union flag. 

The managers of the Philadelphia Fair, believing Mrs. Hoge 
to have had an important connection with that fair, presented to 
her a beautiful gift, in token of their appreciation of her services. 

The Women's Eelief Association, of Brooklyn, New York, 
presented her an elegant silver vase. 

During the second Sanitary Fair in Chicago, a few friends pre- 
sented her with a beautiful silver cup, bearing a suitable inscrip- 
tion in Latin, and during the same fair, she received as a gift a 
Roman bell of green bronze, or verd antique, of rare workman- 
ship, and value, as an object of art. 

Mrs. Hoge made three expeditions to the Army of the South- 
west, and personally visited and ministered to more than one 
hundred thousand men in hospitals. Few among the many effi- 
cient workers, which the war called from the ease and retirement 
of home, can submit to the public a record of labors as efficient, 
varied, and long-continued, as hers. 




^'*"bvAH.KitcT3ie- 



Mrs. Mary A. Livermore. 



MRS. MARY A. LIVERMORE. 




EW of the busy and active laborers in the broad field 
of woman^s effort during the war, have been more 
widely or favorably known than Mrs. Livermore. Her 
labors, with her pen, commenced with the commence- 
ment of the war; and in various spheres of effort, were faithfully 
and energetically given to the cause of the soldier and humanity, 
until a hard-won peace had once more ^^ perched upon our ban- 
ners,^^ and the need of them, at least in that specific direction, no 
longer existed. 

Mrs. Livermore is a native of Boston, where her childhood 
and girlhood were passed. At fourteen years of age she was a 
medal scholar of the '' Hancock School," of that city, and three 
years later, she graduated from the " Charlestown (Mass)., Female 
Seminary," when she became connected with its Board of In- 
struction, as Teacher of Latin, French and Italian. With the 
exception of two years spent in the south of Virginia, — whence 
she returned an uncompromising anti-slavery woman — her home 
was in Boston until her marriage, to Rev. D. P. Livermore, after 
which she resided in its near vicinity, until twelve years ago, 
when with her husband and children she removed West. For 
the last ten years she has been a resident of Chicago. Her hus- 
band is now editor of the New Covenant, a paper published in 
Chicago, Illinois, in advocacy of Universalist sentiments, and, at 
the same time, of those measures of reform, which tend to elevate 

73 577 



578 

and purify erring and sinful human nature. Of this paper Mrs. 
Livermore is associate editor. 

Mrs. Livermore is a woman of remarkable talent, and in cer- 
tain directions even of genius, as the history of her labors in con- 
nection with the war amply evinces. Her energy is great, and 
her executive ability far beyond the average. She is an able 
writer, striking and picturesque in description, and strong and 
touching in appeal. She has a fine command of language, and in 
her conversation or her addresses to assemblies of ladies, one may 
at once detect the tone and ease of manner of a woman trained 
to pencraft. She is the author of several books, mostly poems, 
essays or stories, and is recognized as a member of the literary 
guild. The columns of her husband^s paper furnished her the 
opportunity she desired of addressing her patriotic appeals to the 
community, and her vigorous pen was ever at work both in its 
columns, and those of the other papers that were open to her. 
During the whole war, even in the busiest times, not a week was 
passed that she did not publish somewhere two or three columns 
at the least. Letters, incidents, appeals, editorial correspondence, 
— always something useful, interesting — head and hands were 
always busy, and the small implement, "mightier than the 
sword '^ was never alloAved to rust unused in the ink-stand. 

Before us, as we write, lies an article published in the New 
Covenant of May 18th, 1861, and as we see written scarcely a 
month after the downfall of Fort Sumter. It is entitled " Wo- 
man and the War,^^ and shows how, even at that early day, the 
patriotism of American women was bearing fruit, and how keenly 
and sensitively the writer appreciated our peril. 

" But no less have we been surprised and moved to admiration 
by the regeneration of the women of our land. A month ago, 
and we saw a large class, aspiring only to be 'leaders of fashion,' 
and belles of the ball-room, their deepest anxiety clustering about 
the fear that the gored skirts, and bell-shaped hoops of the spring 
mode might not be becoming, and their highest happiness being 



MRS. MARY A. LIVERMORE. 579 

found in shopping, polking, and the schottisch — pretty, petted, 
useless, expensive butterflies, whose future husbands and children 
were to be pitied and prayed for. But to-day, we find them 
lopping off superfluities, retrenching expenditures, deaf to the 
calls of pleasure, or the mandates of fashion, swept by the incom- 
ing patriotism of the time to the loftiest height of womanhood, 
willing to do, to bear, or to suffer for the beloved country. The 
riven fetters of caste and conventionality have dropped at their 
feet, and they sit together, patrician and plebeian. Catholic and 
Protestant, and make garments for the poorly-clad soldiery. An 
order came to Boston for five thousand shirts for the Massachusetts 
troops at the South. Every church in the city sent a delegation 
of needle-women to ^ Union Hall,^ a former aristocratic ball-room 
of Boston; the Catholic priest detailed five hundred sewing-girls 
to the pious work; suburban towns rang the bell to muster the 
seamstresses; the patrician Protestant of Beacon Street ran the 
sewing-machine, while the plebeian Irish Catholic of Broad 
Street basted — and the shirts were done at the rate of a thousand 
a day. On Thursday, Miss Dix sent an order for five hundred 
shirts for the hospital at Washington — on Friday they were ready. 
And this is but one instance, in one city, similar events transpir- 
ing in every other large city. 

^^ But the patriotism of the Northern women has been developed 
in a nobler and more touching manner. We can easily under- 
stand how men, catching the contagion of war, fired with enthu- 
siasm, led on by the inspiriting trains of martial music, and 
feeling their quarrel to be just, can march to the cannon's mouth, 
where the iron hail rains thickest, and the ranks are mowed down 
like grain in harvest. But for women to send forth their hus- 
bands, sons and brothers to the horrid chances of war, bidding 
them go with many a tearful ^good-by' and ^God bless you,' to 
see them, perhaps, no more — this calls for another sort of hero- 
ism. Only women can understand the fierce struggle, and ex- 



580 

quisite suffering this sacrifice involves — and which has already 
been made by thousands." 

The inception of that noble work, and noble monument of 
American patriotism, the United States Sanitary Commission, 
had its date in the early days of the war. We find in all the 
editorial writings of Mrs. Livermore, for the year 1861, constant 
warm allusions to this organization and its work, which show how 
strongly it commended itself to her judgment, how deeply she 
was interested in its workings, and how her heart was stirred by 
an almost uncontrollable impulse to become actively engaged with 
all her powers in the work. 

In the New Covenant for December 18, 1861, we find over the 
signature of Mrs. Livermore, an earnest appeal to the women of 
the Northwest for aid, in furnishing Hospital supplies for the 
army. A '^ Sanitary Committee," had been formed in Chicago, 
to co-operate with the United States Sanitary Commission, which 
had opened an office, and was prepared to receive and forward 
supplies. These were designed to be sent, almost exclusively, to 
Western hospitals, and a Soldiers^ Festival was at that time being 
held for the purpose of collecting aid, and raising funds for this 
Committee, to use in its charitable work. 

This Committee did not long preserve a separate existence. 
About the beginning of'the year 1862, the Northwestern branch 
of the United States Sanitary Commission was organized at Chi- 
cago, composed of some of the leading and most influential citi- 
zens of that city, and others in the Northwestern States. It at 
once became a power in the land, an instrument of almost incal- 
culable good. 

Soon afterward, Mrs. Livermore, and Mrs. A. H. Hoge, one 
of the most earnest, able and indefatigable of the women work- 
ing in connection with the Sanitary Commission, and a resident 
of Chicago, were appointed agents of the Northwestern Commis- 
sion, and immediately commenced their labors. 

The writer is not aware that a complete and separate sketch of 



MRS. MARY A. LIVERMORE. 581 

either the joint or individual labors of these ladies exists. For 
the outline of those of Mrs. Livermore, dependence is mostly 
made upon her communications to the New Covenant^ and other 
Journals — upon articles not written with the design of furnish- 
ing information of personal eifort, so much, as to give such state- 
ments of the soldier's need, and of the various efforts in that 
direction, as together with appeals, and exhortations to renewed 
benevolence and sacrifice, might best keep the public mind con- 
stantly stimulated and excited to fresh endeavor. 

Running through these papers, we find everywhere evidences 
of the intense loyalty of this gifted woman, and also of the deep 
and equally outspoken scorn with which she regarded every evi- 
dence of treasonable opinion, or of sympathy with secession, on 
the part of army leaders, or the civil authorities. The reader 
will remember the repulse experienced in the winter of 1861-2, 
by the Hutchinsons, those sweet singers, whose ^' voices have ever 
been heard chanting the songs of Freedom — always lifted in 
harmonious accord in support of every good and noble cause." 
Mrs. Livermore's spirit was stirred by the story of their wrongs, 
and thus in keenest sarcasm, she gave utterance to her scorn of 
this Aveak and foolish deed of military tyrants encamping a winter 
through, before empty forts and Quaker guns, while they ven- 
tured only to make war upon girls : ^^ While the whole country has 
been waiting in breathless suspense for six months, each one of 
which has seemed an eternity to the loyal people of the North, 
for the ^ grand forward movement' of the army, which is to cut 
the Gordian knot of the rebellion, and perform unspeakable pro- 
digies, not lawful for man to utter, a backward movement has 
been executed on the banks of the Potomac, by the valiant com- 
manders there stationed, for which none of us were prepared. No 
person, even though his imagination possessed a seven-leagued- 
boot-power of travel, could have anticipated the last great exploit 
of our generals, whose energies thus far, have been devoted to 
the achieving of a 'masterly inactivity.' The 'forward move- 



582 

merit' has receded and receded, like the cup of Tantalus, but the 
backward movement came suddenly upon us, like a thief in the 
night." 

" The Hutchinson family, than whom no sweeter songsters glad- 
den this sorrow-darkened world, have been singing in Washing- 
ton, to the President, and to immense audiences, everywhere giv- 
ing unmixed delight. Week before last they obtained a pass to 
the camps the other side of the Potomac, with the laudable pur- 
pose of spending a month among them, cheering the hearts of 
the soldiers, and enlivening the monotonous and barren camp life 
with their sweet melody. But they ventured to sing a patriotic 
song — a beautiful song of Whittier's, which gave offense to a few 
semi-secessionists among the officers of the army, for which they 
were severely reprimanded by Generals Franklin and Kearny, 
their pass revoked by General McClellan, and they driven back 
to Washington. A backward movement was ordered instanter, 
and no sooner ordered, than executed. Brave Franklin ! heroic 
Kearny ! victorious McClellan ! why did ye not order a Te Deum 
on the occasion of this great victory over a band of Vermont 
minstrels, half of whom were — girls ! How must the hearts of 
the illustrious West-Pointers have pit-a-patted with joy, and di- 
lated with triumph, as they saw the Hutchinson troupe — Asa B., 
and Lizzie C., little Dennett and Freddy, naive Viola, melodeon 
and all — scampering back through the mud, bowed beneath the 
weight of their military displeasure ! Per contra to this expul-*^ 
sion, be it remembered that it occurred within sight of the resi- 
dence of a family, in which there are some five or six young 
ladies, who, it is alleged, have been promised ^^ passes" to go 
South whenever they are disposed to do so, — carrying, of course, 
all the information they can for the enemy. The bands of the 
regiments are also sent to serenade them, and on these occasions 
orders are given to suppress the national airs, as being offensive 
to these traitors in crinoline." 

During the year 1862, Mrs. Livermore, besides the constant 



MRS. MARY A. LIVERMORE. 583 

flow of communications from her pen, visited the army at various 
points, and in company Avith her friend, Mrs. Hoge, travelled 
over the Northwestern states, organizing numerous Aid Societies 
among the women of those states, who were found everywhere 
anxious for the privilege of working for the soldiers, and only 
desirous of knowing how best to accomplish this purpose, and 
through what channel they might best forward their benefactions. 

In December of that year, the Sanitary Commission called a 
council, or convention of its members and branches at Washing- 
ton, desiring that every Branch Commission in the North should 
be represented by at least two ladies thoroughly acquainted with 
its workings, who had been connected with it from the first. 
Mrs. Hoge and Mrs. Livermore were appointed by the Chicago 
Branch. 

They accordingly proceeded to Washington — a long and ardu- 
ous journey in mid winter, but these were not women to grudge 
toil or sacrifice, nor to shrink from duty. 

Both these ladies had laid their talents upon the altar of the 
cause in which they were engaged, and both felt the pressing- 
necessity at that time of a determined effort to relieve the fright- 
ful existing need. Sanitary supplies were decidedly on the 
decrease, while the demand for their increase was most piteously 
pressing. There was a strong call for the coming ^^ council" of 
friends. 

There were hindrances and delays. Delay at starting, in 
taking a regiment on board the cars, necessitating other delays, 
and waiting for trains on time through the whole distance. 

The days spent in Washington were filled with good deeds, 
and a thousand incidents all connected in some way with the 
great work. Of the results of that council, the public was long 
since informed, and few who were interested in the work, did not 
learn to appreciate the more earnest labor, the greater sacrifice and 
self-devotion which soon spread from it through the country. 
Spirits, self-consecrated to so holy a work, could scarcely meet 



584 avoman's work in the civil war. 

without the kindling of a flame that should spread all over the 
country, till every tender woman's heart, in all the land, had 
been touched by it, to the accomplishmeUit of greater and brighter 
deeds. 

While in Washington, Mrs. Livermore spent a day at the camp 
near Alexandria, set apart for convalescents from the hospitals, 
and known as " Camp Misery.'' The suffering there, as we have 
already stated in the sketch of Miss Amy M. Bradley's labors, 
was terrible from insufficient food, clothing and fuel, from want 
of drainage, and many other causes, any one of which might 
well have proved fatal to the feeble sufferers there crowded 
together. The pen of Mrs. Livermore carried the story of these 
wrongs all around the land. While she was in Washington, 
eighteen half sick soldiers died at the camp in one night, from 
cold and starvation. "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of 
the church," and the blood of these soaking into the soil where 
dwelt patriotic, warm-souled men and women, presently produced 
a noble growth and fruitage of charity, and sacrifice, and blessed 
deeds. 

Mrs. Livermore has given her impressions of the President, 
gained from a visit made to the White House during this stay. 
She was one capable fully of appreciating the noble, simple, yet 
lofty nature of Abraham Lincoln. 

Early in this year, Mrs. Livermore made a tour of the hospi- 
tals and military posts scattered along the Mississippi river. She 
was everywhere a messenger of good tidings. Sanitary supplies 
and cheering words seem to have been always about equally ap- 
preciated among the troops. Volunteers, fresh from home, and 
the quiet comfort of domestic life, willing to fight, and if need 
be die for the glorious idea of freedom, they yet had no thought 
of war as a profession. It was a sad, stern incident in their 
lives, but not the life they longed for, or meant to follow. Any- 
thing that was like home, the sight of a woman's face, or the 
sound of her voice, and all the sordid hardness of their present 



MRS. MARY A. LIVERMORE. 585 

liveSj all the martial pageantry faded away^ and they remembered 
only that they were sons, brothers, husbands and fathers. Every- 
where her reception was a kind, a respectful, and even a grateful 
one. 

There was much sickness among the troops, and the fearful 
ravages of scurvy and the deadly malaria of the swamps and 
bottom-lands along the great river were enemies far more to be 
dreaded than the thunder of artillery, or the hurtling shells. 

During this trip she found in the hospitals, at St. Louis, and 
elsewhere, large numbers of female nurses, and ladies who had 
volunteered to perform these services temporarily. The surgeons 
were at that time, almost without exception, opposed to their being 
employed in the hospitals, though their services were afterwards, 
as the need increased, greatly desired and warmly welcomed. 
For these she soon succeeded in finding opportunities for render- 
ing the service which they desired to the sick and wounded. 

Were it possible in the space allowed for this sketch, to give a 
tithe of the incidents which came under the eyes of Mrs. Liver- 
more, or even a small portion of her observations in steamer, train, 
or hospital, some idea of the magnitude and importance of her 
work might be gained. But this we cannot do, and must content 
ourselves with this partial allusion to her constant and indefati- 
gable labors. 

The premonitory symptoms of scurvy in the camps around 
Vicksburg, and its actual existence in many cases in the hospitals, 
so aroused the sympathies of Mrs. Livermore and Mrs. Hoge, on 
a second visit to these camps, that after Avarning General Grant 
of the danger which his medical directors had previously con- 
cealed from him, these two ladies hastened up the river, and by 
their earnest appeals and their stirring and eloquent circulars 
asking for onions, potatoes, and other vegetables, they soon awak- 
ened such an interest, that within three weeks, over a thousand 
bushels of potatoes and onions were forwarded to the army, and 
by their timely distribution saved it from imminent peril. 
74 



586 

In the autumn of 1863, the great Northwestern Sanitary Fair, 
the first of that series of similar fairs which united the North in 
a bond of large and wide-spread charity, occurred. It was Mrs. 
Livermore who suggested and planned the first fair, which netted 
almost one hundred thousand dollars to the Sanitary Commission. 
Mrs. Hoge, had at first, no confidence in the project, but she after- 
ward joined it, and giving it her earnest aid, helped to carry it to 
a successful conclusion. It was indeed a giant plan, and it may 
be chiefly credited, from its inception to its fortunate close, to 
these indefatigable and skilful w^orkers. The writer of this sketch 
was present at the convention of women of the Northwest called 
to meet at Chicago, and consider the feasibility of the project, and 
was forcibly impressed with the great and real power, the concen- 
trated moral force, contained in that meeting, and left its doors 
without one doubt of the complete and ultimate success of the plan 
discussed. Mrs. Livermore held there a commanding position. 
A brilliant and earnest speaker, her words seemed to sway the 
attentive throng. Her commanding person, added to the power 
of her words. Gathered upon the platform of Bryan Hall, were 
Mrs. Hoge, Mrs. Colt, of Milwaukee, and many more, perhaps 
less widely known, but bearing upon their faces and in their atti- 
tudes, the impress of cultured minds, and an earnest active 
resolve to do, which seemed to insure success. Mrs. Livermore, 
seated below the platform, from time to time passed among the 
crowd, and her suggestions whether quietly made to individuals, 
or given in her clear ringing voice, and well selected language to 
the convention, were everywhere received with respect and defer- 
ence. As all know, this fair which was about three months in 
course of preparation, was on a mammoth scale, and was a great 
success, and this result was no doubt greatly owing to the presence 
of that quality, which like every born leader, Mrs. Livermore 
evidently possesses — that of knowing how to select judiciously, 
the subordinates and instruments to be employed to carry out the 
plans which have originated in her mind. 



MRS. MARY A. LIVERMORE. 587 

When this fair had been brought to a successful close, Mrs. 
Livermore returned to the particular work of her agency. When 
not traveling on the business connected with it, she spent many 
busy days at the rooms of the Commission in Chicago. The his- 
tory of some of those days she has written — a history full of 
pathos and illuminated with scores of examples of noble and 
worthy deeds — of the sacrifices of hard-worked busy women for 
the soldiers — of tender self-sacrificing wives concealing poverty 
and sorrow, and swallowing bitter tears, and whispering no word 
of sorrows hard to bear, that the husband, far away fighting for 
his country, might never know of their sufferings; of the small 
but fervently offered alms of little children, of the anguish of 
parents waiting the arrival through this channel of tidings of their 
wounded or their dead; of heroic nurses going forth to their sad 
labors in the hospitals, with their lives in their hands, or return- 
ing in their coffins, or with broken health, the sole reward, beside 
the soldiers^ thanks, for all their devotion. 

Journey after journey Mrs. Livermore made, during the next 
two years, in pursuance of her mission, till her name and person 
were familiar not only in the camps and hospitals of the great 
West, but in the assemblies of patriotic women in the Eastern 
and Middle States. And all the time the tireless pen paused not 
in its blessed work. 

In the spring of 1865, another fair was in contemplation. As 
before, Mrs. Livermore visited the Eastern cities, for the purpose 
of obtaining aid in her project, and as before was most successful. 

In pursuance of this object, she made a flying visit to Wash- 
ington, her chief purpose being to induce the President to attend 
the fair, and add the eclat of his presence and that of Mrs. Lin- 
coln, to the brilliant occasion. An account of her interview with 
him whom she was never again to see in life, which, with her 
impressions of his character, we gain from her correspondence 
with the New Covenant, is appended. 

"Our first effort was to obtain an interview with the President 



538 

and Mrs. Lincoln — and this, by the way, is usually the first effort 
of all new comers. We were deputized to invite our Chief Magis- 
trate to attend the great Northwestern Fair, to be held in May — 
and this was our errand. With the escort of a Senator, who 
takes precedence of all other visitors, it is very easy to obtain an 
interview with the President, and as we were favored in this 
respect, we were ushered into the audience chamber without much 
delay. The President received us kindly, as he does all who 
approach him. He was already apprised of the fair, and spoke 
of it with much interest, and with a desire to attend it. He gave 
us a most laughable account of his visit to the Philadelphia Fair, 
when, as he expressed it, "for two miles it was all people, where 
it wasn't houses,' and where ^ he actually feared he . should be 
pulled from the carriage windows.' We notified him that he 
must be prepared for a still greater crowd in Chicago, as the 
whole Northwest would come out to shake hands with him, and 
told him that a petition for his attendance at the fair, was in 
circulation, that would be signed by ten thousand women of Chi- 
cago. ' But,' said he, ^ what do you suppose my wife will say, at 
ten thousand ladies coming after me in that style?' We assured 
him that the invitation included Mrs. Lincoln also, when he 
laughed heartily, and promised attendance, if State duties did not 
absolutely forbid. ^It would be wearisome,' he said, ^but it 
would gratify the people of the Northwest, and so he would try 
to come — and he thought by that time, circumstances would per- 
mit his undertaking a short tour West.' This was all that we 
could ask, or expect. 

" We remained for some time, watching the crowds that surged 
through the spacious apartments, and the President's reception of 
them. Where they entered the room indifferently, and gazed at 
him as if he were a part of the furniture, or gave him simply a 
mechanical nod of the head, he allowed them to pass on, as they 
elected. But where he was met by a warm grasp of the hand, a 
look of genuine friendliness, of grateful recognition or of tearful 



MRS. MARY A. LIYERMORE. 589 

tenderness, the President's look and manner answered the expres- 
sion entirely. To the lowly and the humble he was especially 
kind; his worn face took on a look of exquisite tenderness, as he 
shook hands with soldiers who carried an empty coat sleeve, or 
swung themselves on crutches ; and not a child was allowed to 
pass him by without a kind word from him. A bright boy, 
about the size and age of the son he had buried, was going 
directly by, without appearing even to see the President. ^Stop, 
my little man,' said Mr. Lincoln, laying his hand on his shoulder, 
* aren't you going to speak to me?' And stooping down, he took 
the child's hands in his own, and looked lovingly in his face, 
chatting with him for some moments." 

The plans of Mrs. Livermore in regard to the fair were carried 
out — with one sad exception. It was a much greater success pe- 
cuniarily than the first. And the war was over, and it was the last 
time that wounded soldiers would call for aid. But alas ! the great 
and good man whose presence she had coveted lay cold in death ! 
She had promised him ^' days of rest" when he should come, and 
long ere then, he had entered his eternal rest, and all that remained 
of him had been carried through those streets, decked in mourning. 

Like her friend, Mrs. Hoge, Mrs. Livermore was cheered dur- 
ing her labors by testimonials of appreciation from her co-labor- 
ers, and of gratitude from the brave men for whom she toiled. 
An exquisite silver vase was sent her by the Women's Relief 
Association, of Brooklyn, the counterpart of that sent Mrs. Hoge 
at the same time. From her co-workers in the last Sanitary Fair, 
she also received a gold-lined silver goblet, and a verd-antique 
Roman bell — the former bearing this complimentary inscription, 
^'PoGulum qui meruit fuitJ' But the gifts most prized by her are 
the comparatively inexpensive testimonials made by the soldiers 
to whom she ministered. At one time she rejoiced in the posses- 
sion of fourteen photograph albums, in every style of binding, 
each one emblazoned with a frontispiece of the maimed or ema- 
ciated soldier who gave it. 



GENERAL AID SOCIETY FOR THE 
. ARMY, BUFFALO. 




HIS Society, a Branch of the Sanitary Commission, was 
organized in the summer of 1862, and became one of 
the Branches of the Commission in the autumn of 
1862, had eventually for its field of operations, the 
Western Counties of New York, a few counties in Pennsylvania 
and Michigan, and received also occasional supplies from one or 
two of the border counties in Ohio, and from individuals in 
Canada West. 

Its first President was Mrs. Joseph E. Follett, a lady of great 
tact and executive ability, who in 1862, resigned, in consequence 
of the removal of her husband to Minnesota. Mrs. Hora- 
tio Seymour, the wife of a prominent business man of Buffalo, 
was chosen to succeed Mrs. Follett, and developed in the per- 
formance of her duties, abilities as a manager, of the highest or- 
der. Through her efforts, ably seconded as they were by Miss 
Babcock and Miss Bird, the Secretaries of the Society, the whole 
field was thoroughly organized, and brought up to its highest 
condition of efiiciency, and kept there through the whole period 
of the war. 

A friendly rivalry was maintained between this branch and the 
Soldiers' Aid Society of Northern Ohio, and the perfect system 
and order with which both were conducted, the eloquent appeals 
and the stirring addresses by which both kept their auxiliaries up 

590 



GENERAL AID SOCIETY FOR THE ARMY, BUFFALO. 591 

to their work, and the grand and noble results accomplished by 
each, are worthy of all praise. In this, as in the Cleveland So- 
ciety, the only paid officer was the porter. All the rest served, 
the President and Secretaries daily, the cutters, packers, and 
others, on alternate days, or at times semi-weekly, without fee or 
compensation. Arduous as their duties were, and far as they 
were from any romantic idea of heroism, or of notable personal 
service to the cause, these noble, patient, and really heroic wo- 
men, rejoiced in the thought that by their labors they were in- 
directly accomplishing a good work in furnishing the means of 
comfort and healing to thousands of the soldiers, who, but for 
their labors would have perished from sickness or wounds, but 
through their care and the supplies they provided, were restored 
again to the ranks, and enabled to render excellent service in put- 
ting down the Rebellion. 

In her closing report, Mrs. Seymour says : 

" We have sent nearly three thousand packages to Louisville, 
and six hundred and twenty-five to New York. We have cut 
and provided materials at our rooms, for over twenty thousand 
suits, and other articles for the army, amounting in all to more 
than two hundred thousand pieces. Little children, mostly girls 
under twelve years of age, have given us over twenty-five hun- 
dred dollars." 

Like all the earnest workers of this class, Mrs. Seymour ex- 
presses the highest admiration for what was done by those name- 
less heroines, 'Hhe patriot workers in quiet country homes, who 
with self-sacrifice rarely equalled, gave their best spare-room linen 
and blankets, their choicest dried fruits, wines and pickles, — and 
in all seasons met to sew for the soldiers, or went about from 
house to house to collect the supplies to fill the box which came 
regularly once a month.'' Almost every woman who toiled thus, 
had a family whose sole care depended upon her, and many of 
them had dairies or other farm-work to occupy their attention, 
yet they rarely or never failed to have the monthly box filled and 



592 

forwarded promptly. We agree with Mrs. Seymour in our esti- 
mate of the nobleness and self-sacrificing spirit manifested by 
these women ; but the patriotic and self-denying heroines of the 
war were not in country villages^ rural hamlets, and isolated 
farms alone ; those ladies who for their love to the national cause, 
left their homes daily and toiled steadily and patiently through 
the long years of the war, in summer's heat and winter's cold, 
voluntarily secluding themselves from the society and social po- 
sition they were so well fitted to adorn, and in which they had 
been the bright particular stars, these too, for the great love they 
bore to their country should receive its honors and its heartfelt 
thanks. 



MICHIGAN SOLDIERS' AID SOCIETY. 




EW of the States of the Northwest, patriotic as tliey all 
were, present as noble a record as Michigan. Isolated 
by its position from any immediate peril from the rebel 
forces, (unless we reckon their threatened raids from 
Canada, in the last year of the War), its loyal and Union-loving 
citizens volunteered with a promptness, and fought with a cour- 
age surpassed by no troops in the Armies of the Republic. They 
were sustained in their patriotic sacrifices by an admirable home 
influence. The successive Governors of the State, during the war, 
its Senators and Representatives in Congress, and its prominent 
citizens at home, all contributed their full share toward keeping 
up the fervor of the brave soldiers in the field. Nor were the 
women of the State inferior to the other sex in zeal and self- 
sacrifice. The services of Mrs. Annie Etheridge, and of Bridget 
Divers, as nurses in the field-hospitals, and under fire are else- 
Avhere recorded in this volume. Others were equally faithful and 
zealous, who will permit no account of their labors of love to be 
given to the public. There were from an early period of the war 
two organizations in the State, which together with the North- 
western Sanitary Commission, received and forwarded the sup- 
plies contributed throughout the State for the soldiers to the great 
depots of distribution at Louisville, St. Louis, and New York. 
These were " The Soldiers' Relief Committee," and the Soldiers' 
Aid Society of Detroit. There were also State agencies at Wash- 
ington and New York, well managed, and which rendered early 

75 593 



694 woman's work in the civil war. 

in the war great services to the Michigan troops. The Soldiers' 
Aid Society of Detroit, though acting informally previously, was 
formally organized in November, 1862, with Mrs. John Palmer, 
as President, and Miss Valeria Campbell, as Corresponding Secre- 
tary. In the summer of 1863, the Society changed its name to 
''The Michigan Soldiers' Aid Society," and the- Soldiers' Relief 
Committee, having been merged in it, became the Michigan 
Branch of the Sanitary Commission, and addressed itself earnestly 
to the work of collecting and increasing the supplies gathered in 
all parts of the State, and sending them to the depots of the Com- 
mission at Louisville and New York, or directly to the front 
when necessary. At the time of this change, Hon. John Owen, 
one of the Associate members of the Sanitary Commission, was 
chosen President, B. Vernor, Esq., Hon. James V. Campbell, 
and P. E. Demill, Esq., also Associates of the Commission, Miss 
S. A. Sibley, Mrs. H. L. Chipman, and Mrs. N. Adams, were 
elected Vice Presidents, and Miss Valeria Campbell, continued 
in the position of Recording Secretary, while the venerable Dr. 
Zina Pitcher, one of the constituent members of the Sanitary 
Commission was their counsellor and adviser. 

Of this organization. Miss Campbell was the soul. Untiring 
in her efforts, systematic and methodical in her work, a writer of 
great power and eloquence, and as patriotic and devoted as any 
of those who served in the hospitals, or among the wounded men 
on the battle-field, she accomplished an amount of labor which 
few could have undertaken with success. The correspondence 
with all the auxiliaries, the formation of new Societies, and Alert 
clubs in the towns and villages of the State, the constant prepa- 
ration and distribution of circulars and bulletins to stimulate the 
small societies to steady and persistent effort, the correspondence 
with the Western Office at Louisville, and the sending thither 
invoices of the goods shipped, and of the monthly accounts of 
the branch, these together, formed an amount of work which would 
have appalled any but the most energetic and systematic of wo- 



595 

men. In her labors, Miss Campbell received great and valuable 
assistance from Mrs. N. Adams, one of the Vice Presidents, Mrs. 
Brent, Mrs. Sabine, Mrs. Luther B. Willard, and Mrs. C. 
E. Russell. The two last named ladies, not satisfied with work- 
ing for the soldiers at home, went to the army and distributed 
their supplies in person, and won the regard of the soldiers by 
their faithfulness and zeal. 

In the year ending November 1st, 1864, one thousand two 
hundred and thirty-five boxes, barrels, etc., were sent from 
this branch to the Army, besides a large amount supplied to the 
Military Hospitals in Detroit, nearly six thousand dollars in 
money was raised, besides nearly two thousand dollars toward a 
Soldiers^ Home, which was established during the year, and fur- 
nished forty-two thousand seven hundred and eighty-five meals, 
and fourteen thousand three hundred and ninety-nine lodgings to 
five thousand five hundred and ninety-nine soldiers from eight 
different States. In the organization of this Home, as well as in 
providing for the families of the soldiers. Miss Campbell was, as 
usual, the leading spirit. In both the Fairs held at Chicago, 
September, 1863, and June, 1865, the Michigan Branch of the 
Sanitary Commission, rendered essential service. Their receipts 
from the second Fair, w^ere thirteen thousand three hundred and 
eighty-four dollars and fifty-eight cents less three thousand one 
hundred and thirty-seven dollars and sixty-five cents expenses, 
and this balance was expended in the maintenance of the Sol- 
diers' Home, and caring for such of the sick and disabled men as 
were not provided for in the Hospitals. Of the aggregate amount 
contributed by this branch to the relief of the soldiers in money 
and supplies, we cannot as yet obtain a detailed estimate. We 
only know that it exceeded three hundred thousand dollars. 



WOMEN'S PENNSYLVANIA BRANCH 
OF U. S. SANITARY COMMISSION. 




HILADELPHIA was distinguished tlirougliout the 
war by the intense and earnest loyalty and patriotism 
of its citizens, and especially of its women. No other 
city furnished so many faithful workers in the hos- 
pitals, the Refreshment Saloons, the Soldiers^ Homes and Read- 
ing-rooms, and no other was half so well represented in the field, 
camp, and general hospitals at the "front/' Sick and wounded 
soldiers began to arrive in Philadelphia very early in the war, 
and hospital after hospital was opened for their reception until in 
1863—4, there were in the city and county twenty-six military 
hospitals, many of them of great extent. To all of these, the 
women of Philadelphia ministered most generously and devotedly, 
so arranging their labors that to each hospital there was a com- 
mittee, some of whose members visited its wards daily, and pre- 
pared and distributed the special diet and such delicacies as the 
surgeons allowed. But as the war progressed, these patriotic 
women felt that they ought to do more for the soldiers, than 
simply to minister to those of them who were in the hospitals of 
the city. They were sending to the active agents in the field, 
Mrs. Harris, Mrs. Husband, Mrs. Lee, and others large quanti- 
ties of stores ; the " Ladies' Aid Association," organized in April, 
1861, enlisted the energies of one class, the Penn Relief Associa- 
tion, quietly established by the Friends, had not long after, furnished 
an outlet for the overflowing sympathies and kindness of the fol- 

595 



PENKSYLVAXIA BRAJs^CH OF U. S. SANITARY COMMISSION. 597 

lowers of George Fox and William Penn; and "the Soldiers' 
Aid Association/' whose president, Mrs. Mary A. Brady, repre- 
sented it so ably in the field, until her incessant labors and hard- 
ships brought on disease of the heart, and in May, 1864, ended 
her active and useful life, had rallied around it a corps of noble 
and faithful workers. But there were yet hundreds, aye, thou- 
sands, who felt that they must do more than they were doing for 
the soldiers. The organizations we have named, though having 
a considerable number of auxiliaries in Pennsylvania, New Jersey 
and Delaware, did not by any means cover the whole ground, 
and none of them were acting to any considerable extent through 
the Sanitary Commission which had been rapidly approving 
itself as the most efficient and satisfactory agency for the distri- 
bution of supplies to the army. In the winter of 1862—3 those 
friends of the soldier, not as yet actively connected with either of 
the three associations we have named, assembled at the Academy 
of Music, and after an address from Pev. Dr. Bellows, organized 
themselves as the Women's Pennsylvania Branch of the Sanitary 
Commission, and with great unanimity elected Mrs. Maria C. 
Grier as their President, and Mrs. Clara J. Moore, Corresponding 
Secretary. Wiser or more appropriate selections could not have 
been made. They were unquestionably, "the right women in 
the right place." Our readers will pardon us for sketching briefly 
the previous experiences and labors of these two ladies who 
proved so wonderfully efficient in this new sphere of action. 

Mrs. Maria C. Grier is a daughter of the late Rev. Dr. Corne- 
lius C. Cuyler, a clergyman, formerly pastor of the Reformed 
Dutch Church in Poughkeepsie, and afterw^ard of the Second 
Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, and married Rev. M. B. 
Grier, D. D., now editor of the "Presbyterian," one of the lead- 
ing papers of the Old School Presbyterian Church. Dr. Grier 
had been for some years before the commencement of the war 
pastor of a Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, North Carolina. 
Wilmington, at the outbreak of the war, shared with Charleston 



598 woman's work in the civil war. 

and Mobile the bad reputation of being the most intensely dis- 
loyal of all the towns of the South. Dr. and Mrs. Grier were 
openly and decidedly loyal, known everywhere throughout that 
region as among the very few who had the moral courage to avow 
their attachment to the Union. They knew very well, that their 
bold avowals might cost them their lives, but they determined 
for the sake of those who loved the Union, but had not their 
courage, to remain and advocate the cause, until it should become 
impossible to do so longer, bearing in mind that if they escaped, 
their departure, to be safe, must be sudden. 

Early in the morning of the 1st of June word was brought 
them that there was no time to lose. Dr. Grier's life was threat- 
ened. A vessel was ready to sail and they must go. Hurriedly 
they left a home endeared to them by long years of residence; 
Dr. Grier's valuable library, a choice collection of paintings and 
other treasures of art and affection were all abandoned to the 
ruthless mob, and were stolen or destroyed. Leaving their 
breakfast untouched upon the table, they hastened to the vessel, 
and by a circuitous route, at last reached Philadelphia in safety, 
and were welcomed by kind and sympathizing friends. Mrs. 
Grier's patriotism was of the active kind, and she was very soon 
employed among the sick and wounded soldiers who reached 
Philadelphia after Bull Kun and BalFs Bluff, or who were left 
by the regiments hurrying to the front at the hospitals of the 
Volunteer and Cooper Shop Refreshment Saloons. With the 
establishment of the larger hospitals in January, 1862, Mrs. Grier 
commenced her labors in them also, and remained busy in this 
work till June, 1862, when at the request of the surgeon in charge 
of one of the Hospital Transports, she went to White House, 
Virginia, was there when McClellan made his "change of base," 
and when the wounded were sent on board the transport cared 
for them and came on to Philadelphia with them, and resumed 
her work at once in the hospitals. The battles of Pope's cam- 
paign and those of South Mountain and Antietam, filled the land 



PENNSYLVANIA BRANCH OF U. S. SANITARY COMMISSION. 59U 

with desolate homes, and crowded not only the hospitals, but the 
churches of Philadelphia with suffering, wounded and dying men, 
and Mrs. Grier like most of the philanthropic ladies of Philadel- 
phia found abundant employment for heart and hands. Her zeal 
and faithfulness in this work had so favorably impressed the 
ladies who met at the Academy of Music to organize the Women's 
Branch of the Commission that she was unanimously chosen its 
President. 

Mrs. Clara J. Moore, formerly a Miss Jessup, of Boston, is the 
wife of Mr. Bloomfield H. Moore, a large manufacturer of Phila- 
delphia. She is a woman of high culture, a poetess of rare sweet- 
ness, and eminent as a magazine writer. She possessed great 
energy, and a rare facility of correspondence. In her days of 
Hospital work, she wrote hundreds of letters for the soldiers, and 
in the organization of the Women's Branch, of which she was 
one of the most active promoters, she took upon herself the bur- 
den of such a correspondence with the Auxiliaries, and the persons 
whom she desired to interest in the establishment of local Aid 
Societies, that when she was compelled by ill health to resign her 
position, a Committee of nine young ladies was ajjpointed to con- 
duct the correspondence in her place, and all the nine found am- 
ple employment. Her daughter married a Swedish Count, and 
returned with him to Europe, and the mother soon after sought 
rest and recovery in her daughter's Scandinavian home. 

Of the other ladies connected with this Pennsylvania Branch, 
all were active, but the following, perhaps in part from tempera- 
ment, and in part from being able to devote their time more fully 
than others to the work, were peculiarly efficient and faithful. 
Mrs. W. H. Furness, Mrs. Lathrop, Mrs. C. J. Stilld, Mrs. J. 
Tevis, Mrs. E. D. Gillespie, Mrs. A. D. Jessup, Mrs. Samuel H. 
Clapp, Mrs. J. Warner Johnson, Mrs. Samuel Field, Mrs. Aub- 
rey H. Smith, Mrs. M. L. Frederick, Mrs. C. Graff, Mrs. Joseph 
Parrish, Miss M. M. Duane, Miss S. B. Dunlap, Miss Eachel 



600 woman's work in the civil wae. 

W. Morris, Miss H. and Miss Anna Blanchard, Miss E. P. Haw- 
ley, and Miss M. J. Moss. 

Of Mrs. Grier's labors in this position, one of tlie Associates 
of the Sanitary Commission, a gentleman who had more oppor- 
tunity than most others of knowing her faithful and persistent 
work, writes : 

" When the Women's Branch was organized, Mrs. Grier re- 
luctantly consented to take the head of the Supply Department. 
In this position she continued, working most devotedly, until the 
work was done. To her labors the success of this undertaking 
is largely due. To every quality which makes woman admired 
and loved, this lady added many which peculiarly qualified her 
for this post; a rare judgment, a wonderful power of organiza- 
tion, and a rare facility for drawing around her the most efficient 
helpers, and making their labors most useful. During the whole 
period of the existence of the Association, the greatest good feel- 
ing reigned, and if ever differences of opinion threatened to in- 
terrupt perfect harmony, a word from Mrs. Grier was sufficient. 
Her energy in carrying out new plans for the increase of the sup- 
plies was most remarkable. When the Women's Pennsylvania 
Branch disbanded, every person conected with it, regretted most 
of all the separation from Mrs. Grier. I have never heard but 
one opinion expressed of her as President of the Association." 

A lady, who, from her own labors in the field, and in the pro- 
motion of the benevolent plans of the Sanitary Commission, was 
brought into close and continued intercourse with her, says of 
her: 

" She gave to the work of the Sanitary Commission, all the 
energies of her mind, — never faltering, or for a moment deterred 
by the many unforeseen annoyances and trials incident to the 
position. The great Sanitary Fair added to the cares by which 
she was surrounded ; but that was carried through so successfully 
and triumphantly, that all else was forgotten in the joy of know- 
ing how largely the means of usefulness was now increased. Her 



PENNSYLVANIA BBANCH OF U. S. SANITARY COMMISSION. 601 

labors ceased not until the war was ended, and the Sanitary Com- 
mission was no loDger required. Those only who have known 
her in the work, can form an idea of the vast amount of labor 
it involved. 

" With an extract from the final report of the Women's Penn- 
sylvania Branch, made in the spring of 1866, which shows the 
character and extent of the work accomplished, we close our ac- 
count of this very efficient organization. 

"On the 26th of March, 1863, the supply department of the 
Philadelphia agency was transferred to the Executive Committee 
of the Women's Pennsylvania Branch. A large and commodious 
building, Number 1307 Chestnut Street, was rented, and the new 
organization commenced its work. How rapidly the work grew^, 
and how greatly its results exceeded our anticipations are now 
matters of pleasant memory with us all. The number of con- 
tributing Aid Societies was largely increased in a few weeks, and 
this was accompanied by a corresponding augmentation of the 
supplies received. The summer came, and with it sanguinary 
Gettysburg, wdth its heaps of slain and wounded, giving the most 
powerful impulse to every loving, patriotic heart. Supplies flowed 
in largely, and from every quarter; and we found that our work 
was destined to be no mere holiday pastime, no matter of sudden 
impulse, but that it would require all the thought, all the time, 
all the energy we could possibly bring to bear upon it. We had 
indeed put on the armor, to take it off only when soldiers were 
no more needed on our country's battle-fields, because the flag of 
the Union was waving again from every one of her cities and 
fortresses. Then came the bloody battles and glorious victories, 
with their depressing and their exhilarating effects. But, through 
the clouds and through the sunshine alike, our armies marched 
on, fought on, steadily and persistently advancing towards their 
final triumph. And so in the cities, in the villages, in the quiet 
country homes, in the luxurious parlor, in the rustic kitchen, 
everywhere, always, the women of the country too pursued their 

76 



602 woman's work in the civil war. 

patriotic, loving work, content if the toil of their busy fingers 
might carry comfort to even a few of our bleeding, heroic sol- 
diers. And as they labored in their various spheres, the results 
of their work poured into the great centres where supplies were 
collected for the Sanitary Commission. Our Department came to 
number over three hundred and fifty contributing Societies, 
besides a large number of individuals contributing with almost 
the regularity of our auxiliaries. Associate Managers,, whose 
business it was to supervise the work in their own neighborhoods, 
had been appointed in nearly every county of the entire Depart- 
ment, fifty-six Associate Managers in all. The time came when 
the work of corresponding with these was too vast to be attended 
to by only one Corresponding Secretary. The lady who had filled 
that office with great ability, and to whose energetic zeal our 
organization owed its first impulse, was compelled by ill health 
to resign. Her place was filled by a Committee of nine, among 
whom the duty of correspondence was systematically divided. 
The work of our Associate Managers deserves more than the pass- 
ing tribute which this report can give. They were nearly all of 
them women whose home duties gave them little leisure, and yet 
the existence of most of our Aid Societies is due to their efforts. 
In one of the least wealthy and populous counties of Pennsylva- 
nia, one faithful, earnest woman succeeded in establishing thirty 
Aid Societies. When the Great Central Fair was projected their 
services were found most valuable in the counties under their 
several superintendence, and they deserve a share of the credit 
for the magnificent success of that splendid undertaking. 

"The total cash value of supplies received is three hundred 
and six thousand and eighty-eight dollars and one cent. Of this 
amount, twenty-six thousand three hundred and fifty-nine dol- 
lars were contributed to the Philadelphia Agency before the for- 
mation of the Women's Branch. The whole number of boxes, 
barrels, etc., received since the 1st of April, 1863, is fifty-three 
hundred and tAventy-nine. Of these packages, twenty-one hun- 



PENNSYLYAIs^IA BRANCH OF U. S. SANITARY COMMISSION. G03 

dred and three were received, from April 1st, 1863, until the 
close of the year; twenty-one hundred and ninety-nine were 
received in 1864; and one thousand and twenty-seven have been 
received since January 1st, 1865. During the present year, three 
hundred and ninety-six boxes have been shipped to various points 
where they were needed for the Army, and sixteen hundred and 
ninety-nine were sent to the central office at Washington City. 
The last item includes the transfer of stock upon closing the depot 
of this Agency. The total number of boxes shipped from the 
Women's Pennsylvania Branch, since April 1st, 1863, is two 
thousand and ninety-five. This means, of course, the articles 
contributed by Societies, and does not include those purchased by 
the Commission, excepting the garments made by the Special 
Relief Committee. 

"At length our work is done. Our army is disbanding, and 
we too must follow their lead. No more need of our daily Com- 
mittee and their pleasant aids, to unpack and assort supplies for 
our sick and wounded. God has given us peace at last. Shall 
we ever sufficiently thank him for this crowning happiness? 
Rather shall we not thank him, by refusing ever again to be idle 
spectators when he has work to be done for any form of suffering 
humanity? And if our country shall, after its baptism of blood 
and of fire, be found to possess a race of better, nobler American 
women, with quickened impulses, high thoughts, and capable of 
heroic deeds, shall not the praise be chiefly due to the better, 
nobler aims set before them by the United States Sanitary Com- 
mission? 

" The following is a list of the expenses of the Supply Depart- 
ment, from the time of its organization to January 1st, 1866. 
These charges were incurred upon goods purchased in this city, 
as well as upon those contributed to the Women's Pennsylvania 
Branch. Their total value is five hundred and ninety-six 
thousand four hundred and sixty-eight dollars and ninety-seven 
cents.'' 



604 woman's work in the civil wae. 

Eent of Depository $2,876 66 

Wm. Piatt, Jr., Superintendent, for expenses incurred by him on 

supplies contributed 2,159 73 

Salary of Storekeeper and Porter 3,093 50 

Freight, express charges, cartage 7,115 22 

Boxes and material for packing 261 78 

Labor, extra 352 96 

Printing and Stationery 928 49 

Advertising 2,310 59 

Fuel and Lights 344 03 

Fitting up Depository, including repairs 619 13 

Insurance on Stock 244 00 

Postages 940 6Q 

Miscellaneous 668 11 

Total $21,914 86 



Relief Committee. — This Committee was organized in 
April, 1863, and had for its object, during the first months of its 
existence, the relief of the wants of soldiers ; but finding a Com- 
mittee of women unequal to the proper performance of this duty, 
and at the same time having had brought before them the great 
necessities of the families of our volunteers, they resigned to 
other hands the care of the soldiers, and determined to devote 
themselves to the mothers, wives, and children, of those who had 
gone forth to battle for the welfare of all. 

The rooms in which this work has been carried on, are at the 
South-east corner of Thirteenth and Chestnut streets. 

Two Committees have been in attendance daily to receive ap- 
plications for relief, work, fuel, etc. Persons thus applying for 
aid are required to furnish proof that their sons or husbands were 
actually soldiers, and are also obliged to bring from some respon- 
sible party a certificate of their own honesty and sobriety. It 
then becomes the duty of the Committee in charge to visit the 
applicant, and to afford such aid as may be needed. 

The means for supplying this aid have been furnished princi- 
pally through generous monthly subscriptions from a few citizens, 



PENNSYLVANIA BRANCH OF TJ. S. SANITARY COMMISSION. 605 

through the hands of Mr. A. D. Jessup. Donations and sub- 
scriptions, through the ladies of the Committee, have also been 
received, and from time to time, acknowledged in the printed re- 
ports of the Committee. 

It has been the aim of the Committee to provide employment 
for the women, for which adequate compensation has been given. 
The Sanitary Commission furnished material, which the Kelief 
Committee had cut and converted into articles required for the 
use of the soldiers by the Sanitary Commission. Thirty-seven 
thousand nine hundred and fifteen articles have been made and 
returned to the Commission, free of charge. Finding the supply 
of work from this source inadequate to the demands for it, the 
Committee decided to obtain work from Government contractors, 
and to pay the women double the price paid by the contractors. 
Twenty thousand one hundred and seventy-four articles were 
made in this way, and returned to the contractors who were kind 
enough to furnish the work. Eleven hundred and twenty-nine 
articles have been made for the freedmen, and five hundred and 
five for other charities ; making in all, fifty-nine thousand seven 
hundred and twenty-three articles. 

Eight hundred and thirty women have been employed in the 
two years during which the labors of the Committee have been 
carried on; and it is due to the women thus employed to state, 
that of the number of garments made, but two have been miss- 
ing through dishonesty. 

The sources from which work has hitherto been obtained hav- 
ing failed, through the blessed return of peace, and the destitu- 
tion being great among those near and dear to the men whose 
lives have been given to purchase that peace, the Committee have 
determined not to cease their labors during the present winter. 

Two hundred women, principally widows, are now employed 
in making garments from materials furnished by the Committee. 
These garments are distributed to the most needy among the ap- 
plicants for relief. 



606 

More than four hundred tons of coal have been given out to 
the needy families of soldiers during the past two years, the coal 
being the gift of a few coal merchants. 

The receipts of the Committee have been as follows : 

From Subscriptions and donations $28,300 00 

From Entertainment given for the benefit of the Committee 1,444 00 

From Contractors in payment for work done 1,681 31 

From the Sanitary Commission 2,551 50 

Total $33,976 81 



This amount has all been expended, with the exception of 
two hundred and forty-eight dollars and forty-seven cents, which 
balance remained in the hands of the Treasurer on the 31st of 
December, 1865. 



WISCONSIN SOLDIERS' AID SOCIETY 




ARLY in the summer of 1861, Mrs. Margaret A. 
Jackson, widow of the late Rev. William- Jackson, of 
Louisville, Kentucky, in connection with Mrs. Louisa 
M. Delafield and others, engaged in awakening an 
interest among the ladies of Milwaukee, in regard to the sanitary 
wants of the soldiers, which soon resulted in the formation of a 
"Milwaukee Ladies' Soldiers' Aid Society," composed of many 
of the benevolent ladies of this city. The society was very zeal- 
ous in soliciting aid for the soldiers, and in making garments for 
their use in the service. 

Very soon other Aid Societies in various parts of the State 
desired to become auxiliaries to this organization, and soon after 
the battle of Bull Run it became evident that their efficiency 
could be greatly promoted by the Milwaukee Society becoming a 
branch of the United States Sanitary Commission, and that rela- 
tion was effected. The name of the society was at this time 
changed to "Wisconsin Soldiers' Aid Society." Mrs. Jackson 
and Mrs. Delafield continued to be efficient as leaders in all the 
work of this society, but in its reorganization, Mrs. Henrietta L. 
Colt was chosen Corresponding Secretary, and commenced her 
work w^ith great zeal and energy. She visited the Wisconsin sol- 
diers in various localities at the front, and thus brought the 
wants of the brave men to the particular knowledge of the society, 
and in this way largely promoted the interest, zeal and efficiency 
of the ladies connected with it. She described the sufferings, 

607 



608 

fortitude and heroism of the soldiers with such simple pathos, 
that thousands of hearts were melted, and contributions poured 
into the treasury of the society in great abundance. 

The number of auxiliaries in the State was two hundred and 
twenty-nine. The central organization at Mihvaukee, beside for- 
warding supplies, had one bureau to assist soldiers^ families in 
getting payments from the State, one to secure employment for 
soldiers' wives and mothers through contracts with the Govern- 
ment, under the charge of Mrs. Jackson, one to secure employ- 
ment for the partially disabled soldiers, and one to provide for 
widows and. orphans. The channels of benevolence through the 
State were various; the people generally sought the most direct 
route to the soldiers in the field; but the gifts to the army sent 
by the Wisconsin Soldiers' Aid Society (their report says without 
any "Fair"), alone amounted — the packages, to nearly six thou- 
sand in number, the value to nearly two hundred thousand dollars. 

The Wisconsin Aid Society and its officers also rendered large 
and valuable aid to the two Sanitary Fairs held in Chicago in 
September, 1863, and June, 1865. 

The Wisconsin Soldiers' Home, at Milwaukee, connected with 
the Wisconsin Aid Society, was an institution of great import- 
ance during the war. Its necessity has not passed away, and 
will not for many years. The ladies who originated and sus- 
tained it were indefatigable in their labors, and the benevolent 
public gave them their heartiest sanction. It gave thousands of 
soldiers a place of entertainment as they passed through the city 
to and from the army, and thus promoted their comfort and good 
morals. The sick and wounded were there tenderly nursed; the 
dying stranger there had friends. 

During the year ending April 15, 1865, four thousand eight 
hundred and forty-two soldiers there received free entertainment, 
and the total number of meals served in the year was seventeen 
thousand four hundred and fifty-six, an average of forty-eight 
daily. These soldiers represented twenty different States, two 




Mrs. Henrietta L, Coet. 



WISCONSIN SOT>DIERS' AID SOCIETY. 609 

thousand and ninety belonging in Wisconsin. A fair in 1865 
realized upwards of one hundred thousand dollars, which is to be 
expended on a permanent Soldiers^ Home, one of the three 
National Soldiers' Homes having been located at Milwaukee, and 
the Wisconsin Soldiers' Home being the nucleus of it. 

Mrs. Colt was so efficient a worker for the soldiers, that a brief 
sketch of her labors, prepared by a personal friend, will be ap- 
propriate in this connection. 

Mes. Henrietta L. Colt, was born March 16th, 1812, in 
Rensselaerville, Albany County, New York. Her maiden name 
was Peckham. She was educated in a seminary at Albany, and 
was married in 1830, to Joseph S. Colt, Esq., a man well known 
throughout the State, as an accomplished Christian gentleman. 
Mr. Colt was a member of the Albany bar, and practiced his 
profession there until 1853, when he removed to Milwaukee. 
After three years' residence there he returned to New York, 
where he died, leaving an honored name and a precious memory 
among men. 

The death of Mr. Colt brought to his widow a sad experience. 
In a letter to the writer, she exj^resses the deep sense of her loss, 
and the efPect it had in preparing her for that devotion to the 
cause of her country, which, during the late rebellion, has led 
her to leave the comforts and refinements of her home to minis- 
ter to the soldiers of the Union, in hospitals, to labor in the work 
of the Wisconsin Soldiers' Aid Society, to go on hospital steamers 
as far as Vicksburg to care for the sick and wounded, as they 
were brought up the river, where they could be better provided 
for, to visit the camps and regimental hospitals around the belea- 
gured city, and to return with renewed devotion to the work of 
sending sanitary supplies to the sick and wounded of the Union 
army, until the close of the war. After portraying the character 
of her lamented husband, his chivalric tenderness, his thoughtful 
affection, his nobility of soul, his high sense of justice, which had 
made him a representative of the best type of humanity, she goes 

77 



610 

on to say: ^^The sun seemed to me to go out in darkness when 
he went to the skies. Shielding me from every want, from all 
care^ causing me to breathe a continual atmosphere of refinement, 
and love, and happiness, when he went, life lost its beauty and its 
charm. In this state of things it was to me as a divine gift — a 
real godsend — to have a chance for earnest absorbing work. The 
very first opportunity was seized to throw myself into the work 
for my country, which had called its stalwart sons to arms to 
defend its integrity, its liberty, its very existence, from the most 
gigantic and wicked rebellion known in history.'' 

It is among the grateful memories of the writer of this sketch, 
that during the winter of 1863, while stationed at Helena, he 
went on board a steamer passing towards Vicksburg, and met 
there Mrs. Colt, in company with Mrs. Livermore, and Mrs. 
Hoge, of Chicago, on their way to carry sanitary stores, and min- 
ister to the sick and wounded, then being brought up the river 
from the first fatal attack on Vicksburg, in which our army was 
repulsed, and from the battle of Arkansas Post, on the Arkansas 
river, in which we were successful, and from an expedition up the 
White river, under General Gorman. He was greatly impressed 
with her intelligence, her purity of character, the beautiful blend- 
ing of her religious and patriotic tendencies, the gentleness and 
tenderness with which she ministered encouragement and sympa- 
thy to the sick soldier, and the spirit of humanity and womanly 
dignity that marked her manners and conversation. The same 
qualities were characteristic of her companions from Chicago, in 
varied combination, each having her own individuality, and it 
was beautiful to see with what judgment and discretion, and union 
of purpose they went on their mission of love. 

On their first visit, she and Mrs. Hoge, improvised a hospital 
of the steamer on which they went, which came up from Vicks- 
burg loaded with wounded men, under the care of- the surgeons. 
The dressing of their wounds and the amputation of limbs going 
on during the passage, made the air exceedingly impure, and yet 



' 611 

these noble women did not flinch from their duty, nor neglect 
their gentle ministrations, which were as balm to the wounded 
heroes who lay stretched on the cabin floors from one end of the 
boat to the other. 

On the renewal of J3he siege of Yicksburg, by General Grant, 
and while our army lay encamped for miles around, Mrs. Colt 
made a second visit to the scene of so much suffering and conflict, 
and visited the camps and regimental hospitals, where the very 
air seemed loaded with disease. Men with every variety of com- 
plaint were brought to the steamer, where it was known there 
were ladies on board, from the Sanitary Commissions, in the hope 
of kinder care and better sustenance. It was amidst dying sol- 
diers, helpless refugees, manacled slaves, and even five hundred 
worn out and rejected mules, that their path up the Mississippi 
had to be pursued with patience, and fortitude, and hope. 

In a note recently received from Mrs. Colt, she thus speaks of 
her visits to the hospitals, and of the brave and noble bearing of 
the wounded soldiers : 

^' I visited the Southwestern hospitals, in order to see the bene- 
fits really conferred by the Sanitary Commission, in order to 
stimulate supplies at home. Such was my story or the effect of 
it, that Wisconsin became the most powerful Auxiliary of the 
Northwestern Branch of the United States Sanitary Commission. 
I have visited seventy-two hospitals, and would find it difficult 
to choose the most remarkable among the many heroisms I every 
day witnessed. 

" I was more impressed by the gentleness and refinement that 
seemed to grow up and in, the men when suffering from horrible 
wounds than from anything else. It seemed always to me that 
the sacredness of the cause for which they offered up their lives 
gave to them a heroism almost super-human — and the sufferings 
caused an almost womanly refinement among the coarsest men. 
I have never heard a word nor seen a look that was not respect- 
ful and grateful. 



612 woman's work in the civil wae. 

" At one time, when in the Adams' Hospital in Memphis, filled 
with six hundred wounded men with gaping, horrible, head and hip 
gunshot wounds, I could have imagined myself among men gathered 
on cots for some joyous occasion, and except one man, utterly dis- 
abled for life, not a regret — and even he thanked God devoutly 
that if his life must be given up then, it should be given for his 
country. 

After a little, as the thought of his wife and babies came to 
him, I saw a terrible struggle ; the great beads of sweat and the 
furrowed brow were more painful than the bodily suffering. But 
when he saw the look of pity, and heard the passage, ^ He doeth 
all things well,' whispered to him, he became calm, and said, 
' He knows best, my wife and children will be His care, and I 
am content.' 

" Among the beardless boys, it was all heroism. ^ They gained 
the victory, they lost a leg there, they lost an arm, and Arkansas 
Post was taken; they were proud to have helped on the cause. It 
enabled them apparently with little effort to remember the great, 
the holy cause, and give leg, arm, or even life cheerfully for its 
defense. 

" I know now that love of country is the strongest love, next to 
the love of God, given to man." 

Besides the good done to the sick and wounded of our army 
by these visits, an equal benefit resulted in their effect upon the 
people at home, in inspiring them to new zeal and energy, and 
increasing generosity on behalf of the country and its brave 
defenders. 

Another service of great value to the soldiers, was rendered by 
Mrs. Colt, under an appointment from the Governor of Wiscon- 
sin, to visit the Army of the Cumberland, and see personally all 
sick Wisconsin men. She went under the escort of Rev. J. P. T. 
Ingraham, and saw every sick soldier of the Wisconsin troops in 
hospital. Their heroic endurance and its recital after her return, 
stimulated immensely the generosity of the peoj)le. 



613 

In such services as these Mrs, Colt passed the four years 
of the war, and by her self-sacrifice and devotion to the cause, in 
which her heart and mind were warmly enlisted, by the 
courage and fortitude with which she braved danger arid 
death, in visiting distant battle-fields, and camps and hospitals, 
and ministering at the couch of sickness, and pain, and death, 
that she might revive the spirit, and save the lives of those who 
were battling for Union and Liberty, she has won the gratitude 
of her country, and deserves the place accorded to her among the 
heroines of the age. 

Mrs. Eliza Salomon, the accomplished and philanthropic 
wife of Governor Salomon, of Wisconsin, was at the outbreak of 
the war living quietly at Milwaukee, and amid the patriotic fer- 
vor which then reigned in Wisconsin, she sought no prominence 
or official position, but like the other ladies of the circle in which 
she moved, contented herself with working diligently for the sol- 
diers, and contributing for the supply of their needs. In the 
autumn of 1861, her husband was elected Lieutenant Governor 
of the State, on the same ticket which bore the name of the la- 
mented Louis Harvey, for Governor. On the death of Governor 
Harvey, in April, 1862, at Pittsburg Landing, Lieutenant Gov- 
ernor Salomon was at once advanced by the Constitution of Wis- 
consin, to his place for the remainder of his term, about twenty- 
one months. Both Governor and Mrs. Salomon, were of German 
extraction, and it was natural that the German soldiers, sick, 
wounded or suffering from privation, should look to the Gov- 
ernor's wife as their State-mother, and should expect sympathy 
and aid from her. She resolved not to disappoint their expecta- 
tion, but to prove as far as lay in her power a mother not only to 
them, but to all the brave Wisconsin boys of whatever nationality, 
who needed aid and assistance. 

At home and abroad, her time was almost entirely occupied 
with this noble and charitable work. She accompanied her hus- 
band wherever his duty and his heart called him to look after 



614 

the soldiers. She visited the hospitals East and West, in Indi- 
ana, Illinois, St. Louis, and the interior of Missouri, and all along 
the Mississippi, as far South as Vicksburg, stopping at every 
place where Wisconsin troops were stationed. 

Her voyage to Vicksburg in May, 1863, was one of consider- 
able peril, from the swarms of guerrillas all along the river, who 
on several occasions fired at the boat, but fortunately did no 
harm. 

She found at Vicksburg, a vast amount of suffering to be re- 
lieved, and abundant work to do, and possessing firm health and 
a vigorous constitution, she was able to accomplish much without 
impairing her health. At the first Sanitary Fair at Chicago, Mrs. 
Salomon organized a German Department, in which she sold 
needle and handiwork contributed by German ladies of Wiscon- 
sin and Chicago, to the amount of six thousand dollars. When, 
in January 1864, Governor Salomon returned to private life, 
Mrs. Salomon did not intermit her efforts for the good of the sol- 
diers ; her duty had become a privilege, and she continued her 
efforts for their relief and assistance, according to her opportunity 
till the end of the war. 



PITTSBURG BRANCH, U. S. SANI- 
TARY COMMISSION. 




ITTSBURG, as the Capital of Western Pennsylvania, 
and the center of a large district of thoroughly loyal 
citizens, early took an active part in furnishing sup- 
plies for the sick and wounded of our armies. As its 
commercial relations and its readiest communications were with 
the West, most of its supplies were sent to the Western Armies, 
and after the battle of Belmont, the capture of Fort Donelson, 
and the terrible slaughter at Shiloh, the Pittsburg Subsistence 
Committee, and the Pittsburg Sanitary Committee, sent ample 
supplies and stores to the sufferers. The same noble generosity 
was displayed after the battles of Perryville, Chickasaw Bluffs, 
Murfreesboro' and Arkansas Post. In the winter of 1863, it was 
deemed best to make the Pittsburg Sanitary Committee, which 
had been reorganized for the purpose, an auxiliary of the United 
States Sanitary Commission, and measures were taken for that 
purpose by Mr. Thomas Bakewell, the President, and the other 
officers of the Committee. The Committee still retained its 
name, but in the summer of 1863, a consolidation was effected of 
the Sanitary and Subsistence Committees, and the Pittsburg 
Branch of the Commission was organized. Auxiliaries had pre- 
viously been formed in the circumjacent country, acknowledging 
one or the other of these Committees as their head, and sending 
their contributions and supplies to it. The number of these was 
now greatly increased, and though latest in the order of time of 

615 



616 

all the daughters of the Commission, it was surpassed by few of 
the others in efficiency. The Corresponding Secretary and ac- 
tive manager of this new organization was Miss Rachael W. Mc 
Fadden, a lady of rare executive ability, ardent patriotism, un- 
tiring industry, and great tact and discernment. Miss McFad- 
den was ably seconded in her labors by Miss Mary Bissell, Miss 
Bakewell, and Miss Annie Bell, and Miss Ellen E. Murdoch, 
tlie daughter of the patriotic actor and elocutionist, gave her 
services with great earnestness to the work. In the spring of 
1864, the people of Pittsburg, infected by the example of other 
cities, determined to hold a Sanitary Fair in their enterprising 
though smoke-crowned city. In its inception, development and 
(completion. Miss McFadden w^as the prime mover in this Fair. 
She was at the head of the Executive Committee, and Miss Bake- 
well, Miss Ella Steward, and Mrs. McMillan, were its active and 
indefatigable Secretaries. The appeals made to all classes in city 
and country for contributions in money and goods were promptly 
responded to, and on the first of June, 1864, the Fair opened in 
buildings expressly erected for it in Alleghany, Diamond Square. 
The display in all particulars, was admirable, but that of the 
Mechanical and Floral Halls was extraordinary in its beauty, its 
tasteful arrangement and its great extent. The net results of the 
Fair, were three hundred and thirty thousand four hundred and 
ninety dollars, and eighty cents, and while it was in progress, 
fifty thousand dollars were also raised in Pittsburg, for the Chris- 
tian Commission. The great Central Fair in Philadelphia, was 
at the same time in progress, so that the bulk of the contributions 
were drawn from the immediate vicinao^e of Pittsburp-. 

O CD 

The Pittsburg Branch continued its labors to the close of the war. 

After the fair, a special diet kitchen on a grand scale was es- 
tablished and supplied with all necessary appliances by the Pitts- 
burg Branch. Miss Murdoch gave it her personal supervision 
for three months, and in August, 1864, prepared sixty-two thou- 
sand dishes. 



MRS. ELIZABETH S. MENDENHALL. 




HIS lady and Mrs. George Hoadly, Avere the active and 
efficient managers of the Soldiers' Aid Society, of Cin- 
cinnati, which bore the same relations to the branch of 
the United States Sanitary Commission, at Cincinnati, 
which the Woman's Central Association of Relief did to the San- 
itary Commission itself. Mrs. Mendenhall is the wife of Dr. 
George Mendenhall, an eminent and public-spirited citizen of 
Cincinnati. Mrs. Mendenhall was born in Philadelphia, in 1819, 
but her childhood and youth were passed in Richmond, Virginia, 
where a sister, her only near relative, still resides. Her relatives 
belonged to the society of Friends, and though living in a slave- 
holding community, she grew up with an abhorrence of slavery. 
On her marriage, in 1838, she removed with her husband to 
Cleveland, Ohio, and subsequently to Cincinnati, where she has 
since resided, and where her hatred of oppression increased in 
intensity. 

When the first call for troops was made in April, 1861, and 
thenceforward throughout the summer and autumn of that year, 
and the winter of 1861-2, she was active in organizing sewing 
circles and aid societies to make the necessary clothing and com- 
forts which the soldiers so much needed when suddenly called to 
the field. She set the example of untiring industry in these pur- 
suits, and by her skill in organizing and systematizing their labor, 
rendered them highly efficient. In February, 1862, the sick and 
wounded began to pour into the government liospitals of Cincin- 

78 ■ 617 



618 

iiati, from the siege of Fort Donelson, and ere these were fairly 
convalescent^ still greater numbers came from Shiloh ; and from 
that time forward, till the close of the war, the hospitals were 
almost constantly filled with sick or wounded soldiers. To these 
suffering heroes Mrs. Mendenhall devoted herself with the utmost 
assiduity. For two and a half years from the reception of the 
first wounded from Fort Donelson, she spent half of every day, 
and frequently the whole day, in personal ministrations to the 
sick and wounded in any capacity that could add to their com- 
fort. She procured necessaries and luxuries for the sick, waited 
upon them, wrote letters for them, consoled the dying, gave infor- 
mation to their friends of their condition, and attended to the 
necessary preparations for the burial of the dead. During the 
four years of the war she was not absent from the city for plea- 
sure but six days, and during the whole period there were not 
more than ten days in which she did not perform some labor for 
the soldiers^ comfort. 

Her field of labor was in the four general hospitals in the city, 
but principally in the Washington Park Hospital, over which 
Dr. J. B. Smith, who subsequently fell a martyr to his devotion 
to the soldiers, presided, who gave her ample opportunities for 
doing all for the patients which her philanthropic spirit prompted. 
During all this time she was actively engaged in the promotion 
of the objects of the Women's Soldiers' Aid Society, of which, 
she was at this time, president, having been from the first an 
officer. The enthusiasm manifested in the northwest in behalf of 
the Sanitary Fair at Chicago, led Mrs. Mendenhall to believe that 
a similar enterprise would be feasible in Cincinnati, which should 
draw its supplies and patrons from all portions of the Ohio valley. 
With her a generous and noble thought was sure to be followed 
by action equally generous and praiseworthy. She commenced at 
once the agitation of the subject in the daily papers of the city, 
her first article appearing in the Times, of October 31, 1863, and 
being followed by others from her pen in the other loyal papers 



MRS. ELIZABETH S. MENDENHALL. 619 

of the city. The idea was received with favor, and on the 7th of 
November an editorial appeared in the Cmcinnati Gazette, entitled 
^^Who speaks for Cincinnati?'^ This resulted in a call the next 
day for a meeting of gentlemen to consider the subject. Com- 
mittees were appointed, an organization effected and circulars 
issued on the 13th of November. On the 19th, the ladies met, 
and Mrs. Mendenhall was unanimously chosen President of the 
ladies' committee, and subsequently second Vice-President of the 
General Fair organization. General Kosecrans being President, 
and the Mayor of the city, first Vice-President. To the further- 
ance of this work, Mrs. Mendenhall devoted all her energies. 
Eloquent appeals from her facile pen were addressed to loyal and 
patriotic men and women all over the country, and a special cir- 
cular and appeal to the patriotic young ladies of Cincinnati and 
the Ohio valley for their hearty co-operation in the good work. 
The correspondence and supervision of that portion of the fair 
which necessarily came under the direction of the ladies, required 
all her time and strength, but the results were highly satisfactory. 
Of the two hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars which was 
the net product of this Sanitary Fair, a very liberal proportion 
was called forth by her indefatigable exertions and her extraordi- 
nary executive ability. 

The aggregate results of the labors of the Women's Aid So- 
ciety, before and after the fair, are known to have realized about 
four hundred thousand dollars in money, and nearly one million 
five hundred thousand in hospital stores and supplies. 

The Soldiers' Home of Cincinnati, one of the best managed 
of these institutions, was also established by the energy of Mrs. 
Mendenhall, and her associates. Up to the close of 1864, eighty 
thousand soldiers had been entertained in this ^' Home," and 
three hundred and seventy-two thousand meals dispensed. They 
also obtained by their exertions, a burial place for Ohio soldiers, 
dying in Cincinnati, at the Spring Grove Cemetery, the Trustees 



620 woman's work in the civil v\^ar. 

of the Cemetery giving one lot, and the Legislature purchasing 
two more at a small price. 

The fair closed, she resumed her hospital work and her duties 
as President of the Women's Soldiers' Aid Society, and continued 
to perform them to the close of the war. Near the close of 1864, 
she exerted her energies in behalf of a Fair for soldiers' families, 
in which fifty thousand dollars were raised for this deserving object. 
The testimonies of her associates to the admirable manner in which 
her hospital work was performed are emphatic, and the thousands 
of soldiers who were the recipients of her gentle ministries, give 
equally earnest testimonies to her kindness and tenderness of heart. 

The freedmen and refugees have also shared her kindly min- 
istrations and her open-handed liberality, and since the close of 
the war her self-sacrificing spirit has found ample employment in 
endeavoring to lift the fallen of her own sex out of the depths of 
degradation, to the sure and safe paths of virtue and rectitude. 

With the modesty characteristic of a patriotic spirit, Mrs. Men- 
denhall depreciates her own labors and sacrifices. "What," she 
says in a letter to a friend, " are my humble efforts for the sol- 
diers, compared with the sacrifice made by the wife or mother of 
the humblest private who ever shouldered a musket?'^ 



DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH 




E,. M. M. MARSH was Medical Inspector of the 
Department of the Gnlf and South, his charge com- 
prising the States of Georgia, South Carolina, and 
Florida. He held his appointment in the capacity 
mentioned from the Sanitary Commission, and from Govern- 
ment, the latter conferring upon him great authority over hos- 
pitals and health matters in general throughout his district. 

It was in the early part of the year 1863 that Mrs. Marsh left 
her home in Vermont and joined her husband at Beaufort. 

The object of Mrs. Marsh in going thither, was to establish a 
home with its comforts amidst the unfamiliar scenes and habi- 
tudes of the South. 

Everything was strange, unnatural, unreal. Beaufort was in 
conquered territory occupied by its conquerors The former 
inhabitants had fled, leaving lands, houses and negroes — all that 
refused to go with them, or could not be removed. Military 
rule prevailed, and the new population were Northern soldiers, 
and a few adventurous women. Besides these were blacks, men, 
women and children, many of them far from the homes they had 
known, and strange alike to freedom and a life made independent 
by their own efforts. From order to chaos, that was the transi- 
tion a Northern woman underwent in coming to this place and 
state of society. 

Mrs. Marsh had no sooner arrived than she found there was 
work to do and duties to perform in her new home on which she 

621 



622 woman's work in the civil war. 

had not calculated. Her husband was frequently absent, some- 
times for long periods. To his charge came the immense stores 
of supplies constantly forwarded by the Sanitary Commission, 
which were to be received, accounted for, unpacked, dealt out to 
the parties for whom they were intended. All this must be done 
by an intelligent person or persons, and by the same, reports of 
the condition of the hospitals must be made, together with the 
needful requisitions. 

Here was business enough to employ the time, exhaust the 
strength, and occupy the thoughts of any single individual. It 
was a ^^ man's work,'' as Mrs. Marsh often declares. Be that as 
it may, it was accomplished by a woman, and in the most admi- 
rable manner. The Sanitary Commission feels both proud and 
grateful, whenever the name of Mrs. Marsh is mentioned. 

Her services were not of a nature to elicit great applause, or to 
attract much attention. They were quietly performed, and at a 
point quite aside from battle-fields, or any great center where 
thousands of spectators had the opportunity to become cognizant 
of them. But they were not, on account of these facts, less bene- 
ficent or useful. 

Mrs. Marsh often visited the hospitals and made the acquaint- 
ance of the sick and wounded, becoming frequently, deeply inte- 
rested in individuals. This was a feeling entirely different from 
that general interest in the welfare of every Union soldier which 
arose as much from the instincts of a patriotic heart, as from 
philanthropy. 

She never became a hospital nurse, however, for she was fully 
occupied in other ways, and her husband. Dr. Marsh did not 
cordially approve, save in a few particular instances, of the intro- 
duction of women to the hospitals in that capacity. But living 
in the immediate vicinity of the hospitals, her benevolent face 
was often seen there, and welcomed with grateful smiles from 
many a bed of suffering. 

A young officer from one of the Northern States and regiments, 



DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH. 623 

wounded at the battle of Olustee, was brought to Beaufort Hos- 
pital for treatment and care. Long previously there had been a 
compact between him and a comrade that the one first wounded 
should be cared for by the other if possible. The exigencies of 
the service were at that time such that this comrade could not 
without much difficulty obtain leave of absence. He finally, 
however^ triumphed over all obstacles, and took his place beside 
his friend. Mrs. Marsh often saw them together, and listened, 
at one time, to a discussion or comparison of views which revealed 
the character and motives of both. 

The un wounded one was rejoicing that his term of service was 
nearly expired. It was at a time when many were re-enlisting, 
but he emphatically declared he would not. "I would, then,^^ 
replied the wounded man, "if I had the strength to enter upon 
another term of service, I would do so. When I did enlist it was 
because of my country's need, and that need is not less imminent 
now. Yes,'' he added, with a sigh, " if God w^ould restore me to 
health, I would remain in the service till the end of the war. 
The surgeon tells me I shall not recover, that the next hemor- 
rhage will probably be the last. But I am not sorry, I am glad, 
that I have done ^vhat I have done, and would do it again, if 
possible.'' 

That this was the spirit of many of the wounded men, Mrs. 
Marsh delights to testify. This man was God's soldier, as well 
as the Union's. He had learned to think amid the awful scenes 
of Fort Wagner, and when wounded at Olustee was prepared to 
live or die, whichever was God's will. Mrs. Marsh was sitting 
beside his bed, in quiet conversation with him, when without 
warning, the hemorrhage commenced. The plash of blood was 
heard, as the life-current burst from his wound, and, " Go now," 
he said in his low calm voice. "This is the end, and I would 
not have you witness it." 

The hemorrhage was, however, checked, but he died soon after. 
Meantime the Sanitary Commission stores w^ere constantly arriving, 



624 

and Mrs. Marsh continued to take the entire charge of them. A 
portion of her house was used for store-rooms, and there were 
received thousands of dollars' worth of comforts of all, kinds from 
the North — a constant^ never-failing flood of beneficence. 

The first prisoners seen by Mrs. Marsh had come from Charles- 
ton. There were nine privates and three or four officers. Their 
rags scarcely covered them decently. They were filthy, squalid, 
emaciated. They halted at a point several miles from Beaufort, 
and a requisition was sent by the officers at this outpost, for 
clothing and other necessaries for the officers of the party. These 
were sent, but Mrs. Marsh thought there must be others — private 
soldiers, perhaps, for whom no provision had been made. She 
accordingly dispatched her nephew, who was a member of her 
family, to make inquiries and see that the wants of such were 
provided for. 

In a short time she saw him returning at the head of his ragged 
brigade. The poor fellows were indeed a loathsome sight, worn, 
feeble, clad only in the unsightly rags which had been their prison 
wear. They were not shown into the office, but to a vestibule 
without, and their first desire was for water, soap — the materials 
for cleanliness. Mrs. Marsh examined her stores for clothing. 
That which was on hand was mainly designed for hospital use. 
She would have given each an entire suit, but could find only two 
or three pairs of coarse blue overalls, such as are worn by labor- 
ers at the North. As she stepped to the door to give them this 
clothing, she remarked upon the scarcity, and said the overalls 
must be given to the men that most needed them, but at once 
saw that where all were in filthy rags, there seemed no choice. 
The one who stood nearest her had taken a pair of the overalls, 
and was surveying them with delight, but he at once turned to 
another, "I guess he needs 'em most, I can get along with the 
old ones, a while," he said, in a cheerful tone, and smothering a 
little sigh he turned away. 

This spirit of self-sacrifice was almost universal among the men 



DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH. 625 

of our army, and was shown to all who had any care over them. 
How much every man needed an entire change of clean, comfort- 
able garments, was shown the instant they left, when the nephew 
of Mrs. Marsh commenced sweeping the vestibule where they 
had stood, with great vigor, replying to the remonstrances of his 
aunt, only ^^I must,'' and adding, in a lower tone, '^They can't 
help it, poor fellows," as he made the place too hot to hold any- 
thing w^ith life. 

It was in the summer of 1864, that communication was first 
obtained with the prisoners in Charleston, a communication after- 
wards extended to all the loathsome prison-pens of the South, 
where our men languished in filth, disease, and starvation. 

At this time Dr. Marsh's duties kept him almost entirely at 
Folly Island, and there he received a letter from General Sey- 
mour who A¥as confined, with other Union officers, in Charleston, 
a part of the time under fire, asking that if possible certain need- 
ful articles might be sent to him. This letter was immediately 
sent to Mrs. Marsh, who at once prepared a box containing more 
than twice the amount of articles asked for, and forwarded them 
to the confederate authorities at Charleston, for General Seymour. 
Almost contrary to all expectations, this box reached the General, 
and but a short time elapsed before its receipt was acknowledged. 
The General wrote touchingly of their privations, and while 
thanking Mrs. Marsh warmly for the articles already sent, repre- 
sented the wants of some of the other gentlemen, his companions. 
Supplies were sent them, received and acknowledged, and thus a 
regular channel of communication was opened. 

One noticeable fact attended this correspondence — namely, the 
extreme modesty of the demands made; no one ever asking for 
more than he needed at the time, as a pair of stockings, or a single 
shirt, and always expressing a fear lest others might need these 
favors more than himself. 

When, soon after, by means of this entering wedge, the way to 
the prisons of Anderson ville, Florence, and Salisbury, was 

79 



626 woman's woek in the civil war. 

opened, the same fact was observed. In the midst of all their 
dreadful suffering and misery, the prisoners there made no large 
demands. They asked for but little — the smallest possible 
amount, and were always fearful lest they might absorb the 
bounty to which others had a better claim. 

After this communication was opened, Mrs. Marsh found a 
delightful task in preparing the boxes which in great numbers 
were constantly being sent forward to the prisons. It was a part 
of her duty, also, to inspect the letters which went and came 
between the prisons and the outside world. 

The pathos of many of these was far beyond description. 
Touching appeals constantly came to her from distant Northern 
homes for some tidings of the sons, brothers, fathers of whose 
captivity they had heard, but whose further existence had been 
a blank. Where are they? and how are they? were constantly 
recurring questions, which alas ! it was far too often her sad dut}^ 
to answer in a way to destroy all hope. 

And the letters of the prisoners, filled to the uttermost, not 
with complaints, but with the pervading sadness that could not 
for one moment be banished from their horrible lives! J^o words 
can describe them, they were simply heart-breaking! Just as 
the horror of the prison-pens is beyond the power of words to 
fitly tell, so are the griefs which grew out of them. 

]\Irs. ]\Iarsh continued busily employed in this work of mercy 
until it was suddenly suspended. Some formality had not been 
complied with, and the privilege of communication was discon- 
tinued; and all their friends disappointed and disheartened. 
This we can easily imagine, but not what the suspension was to 
the suffering prisoners who had for a short season enjoyed this 
one gleam of light from the outer world, and were now plunged 
into a rayless hopeless night. When the time of deliverance 
came, as we all know, many of them were past the power of 
rejoicing in it. 

Dr. Marsh was for a long time detained at Folly and Morris 



DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH. 627 

Islands. The force at Beaufort was quite inadequate, and exceed- 
ingly onerous and absorbing duties fell to the share of Mrs. 
Marsh. Communication was difficult. Dr. Marsh at times could 
not reach his home. Vessels which had been running between 
ISTew York and Port Royal and Hilton Head were detained 
at the North. The receipt and transmission of sanitary stores, 
and the immense correspondence growing out of it; the general 
oversight of the needs of the hospitals, and the monthly re- 
ports of the same all fell heavily upon one brain and one pair of 
hands. 

It was at just such an emergency that the army of Sherman, 
the "Great Marcli'^ to the sea nearly completed, arrived upon 
the scene. The sick and disabled arrived by hundreds, the 
hospitals were filled up directly, and even thronged; while 
so numerous were the cases of small-pox, which had appeared 
in the army, that a large separate hospital had to be pro- 
vided for them. 

We may perhaps imagine how busy was the brave woman, left 
with such an immense responsibility on her hands. 

Early in 1865, Dr. Marsh received notice that it had been 
determined to send him to Newbern, North Carolina, but he 
never went, being attacked soon after by a long and dangerous 
illness which for a time rendered it improbable that he would 
ever see his Northern home again. 

It was at this time that a cargo of sanitary supplies arrived 
from New York. A part of these were a contribution from 
Montreal. Montreal had before sent goods to the Commission, 
but these were forwarded to Mrs. Marsh herself. A letter of 
hers w^ritten not long previous to a friend in New York, had 
])een forwarded to Montreal, and had aroused a strong desire 
there to help her in her peculiar work. A large portion of this 
gift was from an M. P., who, though he might, like others, lift his 
voice against the American war, had yet enough of the milk of 



628 

human kindness' in his heart to lead him to desire to do some- 
thing for her suffering soldiers and prisoners. 

This gift Mrs. Marsh never saw, it being sent with the rest of 
the unbroken cargo back to Newbern in view of the expected 
arrival of her family there. 

The surrender of Lee virtually closed the war, and the neces- 
sity of Dr. Marsh's stay in the South was no longer an important 
one. Besides this, his health would not permit it, and he returned 
to New York where he had long been wanted to take charge of 
the "Lincoln Home'' in Grove Street, a hospital opened by the 
Sanitary Commission for lingering cases of wounds and sickness 
among homeless and destitute soldiers. 

Of this hospital and home Dr. Marsh was surgeon, and Mrs. 
Marsh matron. Dr. Hoadly who had been with Dr. Marsh at 
the South, still retained the position of assistant. The health of 
Dr. Marsh improved, but he has never entirely recovered. 

They entered the Lincoln Home on the 1st of May, 1865, and 
the house was immediately filled with patients. They remained 
there until June of the following year, 1866. During their stay 
between three and four hundred patients were admitted, and of 
those who were regular patients none died. One soldier, a 
Swede, was found in the street in the last stages of exhaustion 
and suffering, and died before the morning following his admis- 
sion. He bore about him evidences of education and gentle 
birth, but he could not speak English, and carried with him into 
another world the secret of his name and identity. He had no 
disease, but the foundations of his life had been sapped by the 
irritation caused by filth and vermin. 

As at the South, in the services of Mrs. Marsh here, there was 
a great dispro2)ortion between their showiness and their useful- 
ness. She pursued her quiet round of labors, the results of which 
^vi\\ be seen and felt for years, as much as in the present. Her 
kind voice, and pleasant smile will be an ever living and delight- 
ful memory in the hearts of all to whom she ministered during 



DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH. 629 

those long hours of the nation's peril, in which the best blood of 
her sons was poured out a red libation to Liberty. 

After the close of the Lincoln Home, Mrs. Marsh continued 
to devote herself to suffering soldiers and their families, making 
herself notably useful in this important department of the na- 
tion's work. 



SAINT LOUIS LADIES' UNION AID 
SOCIETY. 




HIS Society, the principal Auxiliary of the Western 
Sanitary Commission^ and holding the same relation to 
it that the Women's Central Association of Relief in 
New York, did to the United States Sanitary Com- 
mission had its origin in the summer of 1861. On the 26th of 
July, of that year, a few ladies met at the house of Mrs. F. 
Holy, in St. Louis, to consider the propriety of combining the 
efforts of the loyal ladies of that city into a single organization 
in anticipation of the conflict then impending within the State. 
At an adjourned meeting held a week later, twenty-five ladies 
registered themselves, as members of the " Ladies' Union Aid So- 
ciety,'' and elected a full board of officers. Most of these resigned 
in the following autumn, and in November, 1861, the following 
list was chosen, most of whom served through the war. 

President : Mrs. Alfred Clapp ; Vice Presidents, Mrs. Samuel 
C. Davis, Mrs. T. M. Post, Mrs. Robert Anderson; Recording 
Secretary, Miss H. A. Adams ; Treasurer, Mrs. S. B. Kellogg ; 
Corresponding Secretary, Miss Belle Holmes; afterwards. Miss 
Anna M. Debenham. An Executive Committee was also ap- 
pointed, several of the members of which, and among the num- 
ber, Mrs. C. R. Springer, Mrs. S. Palmer, Mrs. Joseph Crawshaw, 
:Mrs. A\^ashington King, Mrs. Charles L. Ely, Mrs. F. F. Mahby, 
Mrs. C. N. Barker, Miss Susan J. Bell, Miss Eliza S. Glover, 

630 



631 

and Miss Eliza Page, were indefatigable in their labors for the 
soldiers. 

This Society was from the beginning, active and efficient. It 
conducted its business with great ability and system, and in every 
direction made itself felt as a power for good throughout the Mis- 
sissippi Valley. Its officers visited for a considerable period, 
fourteen hospitals in the city and vicinity, and were known in the 
streets by the baskets they carried. Of one of these baskets the 
recording Secretary, Miss Adams, gives us an interesting inven- 
tory in one of her reports : ^^ Within was a bottle of cream, a 
home-made loaf, fresh eggs, fruit and oysters ; stowed away in a 
corner was a flannel shirt, a sling, a pair of spectacles, a flask of 
cologne ; a convalescent had asked for a lively book, and the 
lively book was in the basket ; there was a dressing-gown for 
one, and a white muslin handkerchief for another ; and paper, 
envelopes and stamps for all.^' 

The Christian Commission made the ladies of the Society their 
agents for the distribution of religious reading, and they scattered 
among the men one hundred and twenty-five thousand pages of 
tracts, and twenty thousand books and papers. 

The Ladies' Union Aid Society, sent delegates to all the earlier 
battle-fields, as well as to the camps and trenches about Vicks- 
burg, and these ladies returned upon the hospital steamers, pur- 
suing their heroic work, toiling early and late, imperilling in 
many cases their health, and even their lives, in the midst of the 
trying and terrible scenes which surrounded them. During the 
fall and winter of 1862-3, the Society's rooms were open day and 
evening, for the purpose of bandage-rolling, so great was the de- 
mand for supplies of this kind. 

Amid their other labors, they were not unmindful of the dis- 
tress which the families of the soldiers were suffering. So great 
was the demand for hospital clothing, that they could not supply 
it alone, and they expended five thousand five hundred dollars 
received for the purpose from the Western Sanitary Commission, 



632 

in paying for the labor on seventy-five thousand garments fi)r the 
hospitals. The Medical Purveyor, learning of their success, 
oifered the Aid Society a large contract for army work. They 
accepted it, and prepared the work at their rooms, and gave out 
one hundred and twenty-eight thousand articles to be made, pay- 
ing out over six thousand dollars for' labor. Several other con- 
tracts followed, particularly one for two hundred and sixty-one 
thousand yards of bandages, for the rolling of which six hundred 
and fifty-two dollars were paid. By these means and a judicious 
liberality, the Society prevented a great amount of suffering in 
the families of soldiers. The Benton Barracks Hospital, one of 
the largest in the West, to which reference has been frequently 
made in this volume, had for its surgeon-in-charge, that able sur- 
geon and earnest philanthropist. Dr. Ira Russell. Ever anxious to 
do all in his power for his patients, and satisfied that more skilfully 
prepared special diet, and in greater variety than the government 
supplies permitted would be beneficial to them, he requested the 
ladies of the UnionAid Society, to occupy a reception-room, store- 
room, and kitchen at the hospital, in supplying this necessity. 
Donations intended for the soldiers could be left at these rooms 
for distribution ; fruit, vegetables, and other offerings could here 
be prepared and issued as required. Thus all outside bounty 
could be systematized, and the surgeon could regulate the diet of 
the entire hospital. Miss Bettie Broadhead, was the first super- 
intendent of these rooms which were subsequently enlarged and 
multiplied. Bills of fare were distributed in each ward every 
morning ; the soldiers wrote their names and numbers opposite 
the special dishes they desired ; the surgeon examined the bills 
of fare, and if he approved, endorsed them. At the appointed 
time the dishes distinctly labelled, arrived at their destination in 
charge of an orderly. Nearly forty-eight thousand dishes were 
issued in one year. 

In the fall of 1863, the Society established a branch at Nash- 
ville, Tennessee, Mrs. Barker and Miss H. A. Adams, going 



633 

tliitlier with five hundred dollars and seventy-two boxes of stores. 
Miss AdamSj though surrounded with difficulties^ and finding the 
surgeons indifferent if not hostile, succeeded in establishing a 
special diet kitchen, like that at Benton Barracks^ Hospital, This 
subsequently became a very important institution, sixty-two thou- 
sand dishes being issued in the single month of August, 1864. 
The supplies for this kitchen, were mostly furnished by the Pitts- 
burg Subsistence Committee, and Miss Ellen Murdoch, the 
daughter of the elocutionist to whom we have already referred, 
in the account of the Pittsburg Branch, prepared the supplies 
with her own hands, for three months. During this period, no 
reasonable wish of an invalid ever went ungratified. 

This Society also did a considerable work for the freedmen — 
and the white refugees, in connection with the Western Sanitary 
Commission. On the formation of the Freedmen^s Relief So- 
ciety, this part of their work was transferred to them. 

We have no means of giving definitely the aggregate receipts 
and disbursements of this efficient Association. They were so 
involved with those of the Western Sanitary Commission, that it 
would be a difficult task to separate them. The receipts of the 
Commission were seven hundred and seventy-one thousand dol- 
lars in money, and about three millions five hundred thousand 
dollars in supplies. Of this sum we believe we are not in the 
wrong in attributing nearly two hundred thousand dollars in cash, 
and one million dollars in supplies to the Ladies' Union Aid 
Society, either directly or indirectly. 

Believing that the exertions of the efficient officers of the So- 
ciety deserve commemoration, we have obtained the following 
brief sketches of Mrs. Clapp, Miss Adams, (now Mrs. Collins), 
Mrs. Springer, and Mrs. Palmer. 

Among the earnest and noble women of St. Louis, who devoted 
themselves to the cause of their country and its heroic defend- 
ers at the beginning of the great Rebellion, and whose labors 
and sacrifices were maintained throughout the struggle for na- 

80 



634 woman's work in the civil war. 

tional unity and liberty, none are more worthy of honorable men- 
tion, in a work of this character, than Mrs. Anna L. Clapp. 

She was distinguished among those ladies whose labors for the 
Charities of the war, and whose presence in the Hospitals, cheered 
and comforted the soldiers of the Union, and either prepared 
them for a tranquil and happy deliverance from their sufferings, 
or sent them back to the field of battle to continue the heroic 
contest until success should crown the victorious arms of the na- 
tion, and give peace and liberty to their beloved country. 

The maiden name of Mrs. Clapp was Wendell, and her pater- 
nal ancestors originally emigrated from Holland. She was born 
in Cambridge, Washington county. New York, and was educated 
at Albany. 

For three years she was a teacher in the celebrated school of 
E,ev. Nathaniel Prime, at Newburgh, New York. In the year 
1838, she was married to Alfred Clapp, Esq., an enterprising 
merchant, and lived for several years m New York City, and 
Brooklyn, where she became an active member of various bene- 
volent associations, and performed the duties of Treasurer of the 
Industrial School Association. 

Just previous to the Rebellion, she emigrated with her husband 
and family to St. Louis, and after the war had commenced, and 
the early battles in the West had begun to fill every vacant pub- 
lic building in that city with sick and wounded men, she, with 
many other noble women of like heroic temperament, found a 
new sphere for their activity and usefulness. In the month of 
August, 1861, the Ladies' Union Aid Society, of St. Louis, was 
organized for the purpose of ministering to the wants of the sick 
and wounded soldiers, providing Hospital garments and Sanitary 
stores, in connection with similar labors by the Western Sanitary 
Commission, assisting soldiers' families, and visiting the Hospi- 
tals, to give religious counsel, and minister consolation to the sick 
and dying, in a city where only a few of the clergy of the various 
denominations who were distinguished for their patriotism and 



SAINT LOUIS ladies' u:n'ion aid society. 635 

loyalty, attended to this duty ; the majority, both Protestant and 
Catholic, being either indifferent to the consequences of the re- 
bellion, or in sympathy with the treason which was at that time 
threatening the Union and liberties of the country with disrup- 
tion and overthrow. 

Of this Association of noble and philanthropic women, which 
continued its useful labors during the war, Mrs. Clapp was made 
President in the fall of 1861, holding that office during the ex- 
istence of the organization, giving nearly all her time and ener- 
gies to this great work of helping and comforting her country's 
defenders. 

After the great battles of Shiloh and Vicksburg, and Arkansas 
Post, she, with other ladies of the Association, repaired on Hos- 
pital Steamers to the scene of conflict, taking boxes of Sanitary 
stores. Hospital garments and lint for the wounded, and minis- 
tered to them with her own hands on the return trips to the Hos- 
pitals of St. Louis. 

As President of the Ladies' Union Aid Society, her labors were 
arduous and unremitting. The work of this association was 
always very great, consisting in part of the manufacture of hos- 
pital garments, by contract with the medical purveyor, which 
work was given out to the wives of soldiers, to enable them the 
better to support themselves and children, during the absence of 
their husbands in the army. The work of cutting out these gar- 
ments, giving them out, keeping an account with each soldier's 
wife, paying the price of the labor, etc., was no small undertak- 
ing, requiring much labor from the members of the society. It 
w^as an interesting sight, on Thursday of each week, to see hun- 
dreds of poor women filling the large rooms of the association on 
Chestnut Street, from morning to night, receiving work and pay, 
and to witness the untiring industry of the President^ Secretary, 
Treasurer, and Committees, waiting upon them. 

The visitation of these families by committees, and their reports, 
to say nothing of the general sanitary and hospital work per- 



636 woman's work in the civil war. 

formed by the society, required a large amount of labor; and in 
addition to this the aid rendered to destitute families of Union 
refugees, and the part taken by Mrs. Clapp in organizing a 
Refugee Home, and House of Industry, would each of itself 
make quite a chapter of the history of the association. 

In all these labors Mrs. Clapp showed great executive and 
administrative ability, and must be reckoned by all who know 
her, among the truly patriotic women of the land. And in all 
the relations of life her character stands equally high, adorning, 
as she does, her Christian profession by works of piety, and 
patriotism, and love, and commanding the highest confidence and 
admiration of the community in which she lives. 

The devoted labors of Miss H. A. Adams, in the service of 
the soldiers of the Union and their families, from the beginning 
of the war, till near its close, entitle her to a place in the records 
of this volume. She was born in Fitz William, New Hamp- 
shire, at the foot of Mount Monadnock, and grew to maturity 
amid the beautiful scenery, and the pure influence.'^ of her New 
England home. Her father, Mr. J. S. Adams, was a surveyor, a 
man of character and influence, and gave to his daughter an 
excellent education. At fifteen years of age she became a teacher, 
and in 1856 came West for the benefit of her health, having a 
predisposition to pulmonary consumption, and fearing the effect 
of the east winds and the trying climate of the Eastern States. 

Having connections in St. Louis she came to that city, and, for a 
year and a half, was employed as a teacher in the public schools. 
In this, her chosen profession, she soon acquired an honorable 
position, which she retained till the commencement of the war. 
At this time, however, the management of the schools was di- 
rected by a Board of Education, the members of which were 
mostly secessionists, the school fund was diverted from its proper 
uses by the disloyal State government, under Claib. Jackson, and 
all the teachers, who were from New England, were dismissed 
from their situations, at the close of the term in 1861. Miss 



SAINT LOUIS LADIES' UNION AID SOCIETY. 637 

Adains, of course, was included in this number, and the unjust 
proscription only excited more intensely the love of her country 
and its noble defenders, who were already rallying to the standard 
of the Union, and laying down their lives on the altars of justice 
and liberty. 

In August, 1861, the Ladies' Union Aid Society, of St. Louis, 
was organized. Miss Adams was present at its first meeting and 
assisted in its formation. She was chosen as its first secretary, 
which office she filled with untiring industry, and to the satisfac- 
tion of all its members, for more than three years. 

In the autumn of 1863, her only brother died in the military 
service of the United States. With true womanly heroism, she 
went to the hospital at Mound City, Illinois, where he had been 
under surgical treatment, hoping to nurse and care for him, and 
see him restored to health, but before she reached the place he had 
died and was buried. From this time her interest in the welfare 
of our brave troops was increased and intensified, and there was 
uo sacrifice she was not willing to undertake for their benefit. 
Moved by the grief of her own personal bereavement, her sym- 
pathy for the sick and wounded of the army of the Union, was 
manifested by renewed diligence in the work of sending them all 
possible aid and comfort from the ample stores of the Ladies' 
Union Aid Society, and the Western Sanitary Commission, and 
by labors for the hospitals far and near. 

The duties of Miss Adams, as Secretary of the Ladies' Union 
Aid Society, were very arduous. 

The Society comprised several hundred of the most noble, effi- 
cient and patriotic women of St. Louis. The rooms were open 
every day, from morning to night. Sanitary stores and Hospital 
garments were prepared and manufactured by the members, and 
received by donation from citizens and from abroad, and had to 
be stored and arranged, and given out again to the Hospitals, 
and to the sick in regimental camps, in and around St. Louis, 
and also other points in Missouri, as they were needed. Letters 



638 woman's work in the ciyil war. 

of acknowledgement had to be written^ applications answered, ac- 
counts kept, proceedings recorded, information and advice given, 
reports written and published, all of which devolved upon the 
faithful and devoted Secretary, who was ever at her post, and con- 
stant and unremitting in her labors. Soldiers' families had also 
to be assisted ; widows and orphans to be visited and cared for ; 
rents, fuel, clothing, and employment to be provided, and the 
destitute relieved, of whom there were thousands whose husbands, 
and sons, and brothers, were absent fighting the battles of the 
Union. 

Missouri was, during the first year of the war, a battle-ground. 
St. Louis and its environs were crowded with troops ; the Hos- 
pitals were large and numerous; during the winter of 1861-2, 
there were twenty thousand sick and wounded soldiers in them; 
and the concurrent labors of the Ladies' Union Aid Society, and 
the Western Sanitary Commission, were in constant requisition. 
The visiting of the sick, ministering to them at their couches of 
pain, reading to them, cheerful conversation with them, were du- 
ties which engaged many of the ladies of the Society ; and numer- 
ous interesting and affecting incidents were preserved by Miss 
Adams, and embodied in the Reports of the Association. She 
also did her share in this work of visiting; and during the win- 
ter of 1863-4, she went to Nashville, Tennessee, and established 
there a special diet kitchen, upon which the surgeons in charge 
of the hospitals, could make requisitions for the nicer and more 
delicate preparations of food for the very sick. She remained all 
winter in ISTashville, in charge of a branch of the St; Louis Aid 
Society, and, by her influence, secured the opening of the hospi- 
tals to female nurses, who had hitherto not been employed in 
Nashville. Knowing, as she did, the superior gentleness of wo- 
men as nurses, their more abundant kindness and sympathy, and 
their greater skill in the preparation of food for the sick ; know- 
ing also the success that had attended the experiment of intro- 
ducing women nurses in the Military Hospitals in other cities, 



SAINT LOUIS ladies' UNION AID SOCIETY. 639 

she determined to overcome the prejudices of such of the army 
surgeons as stood in the way, and secure to her sick and wounded 
brothers in the hospitals at Nashville, the benefit of womanly 
kindness, and nursing, and care. In this endeavor she was en- 
tirely successful, and by her persuasive manners, her womanly 
grace and refinement, and her good sense, she recommended her 
views to the medical authorities, and accomplished her wishes. 

Returning to St. Louis in the spring of 1864, she continued to 
perform the duties of Secretary of the Ladies' Union Aid So- 
ciety, till the end of the year, when, in consequence of a con- 
templated change in her life, she resigned her position, and retired 
from it with the friendship and warm appreciation of her co- 
workers in the useful labors of the society. In the month of 
June, 1865, she w^as married to Morris Collins, Esq., a citizen of 
St. Louis. 

Mes. C. R. Speinoer, who has labored so indefatigably at St. 
Louis, for the soldiers of the Union and their families during the 
w^ar, was born in Parsonsfield, Maine. Her maiden name was 
Lord. Previous to her marriage to Mr. Springer, a respectable 
merchant of St. Louis, she was a teacher in New Hampshire. 
On the event of her marriage, she came to reside at St. Louis, 
about ten years ago, and on the breaking out of the war, espoused 
with patriotic ardor the cause of her country in its struggle with 
the great slaveholding rebellion. To do this in St. Louis, at that 
period, when weaftb and fashion, and church influence were so 
largely on the side of the rebellion, and every social circle was 
more or less infected with treason, required a high degree of moral 
courage and heroism. 

From the first opening of the hospitals in St. Louis, in the au- 
tumn of 1861, Mrs. Springer became a most untiring, devoted 
and judicious visiter, and by her kind and gracious manners, her 
words of sympathy and encouragement, and her religious conso- 
lation, she imparted hope and comfort to many a poor, sick, and 
wounded soldier, stretched upon the bed of languishing. 



640 

Besides her useful labors in the hospitals, Mrs. Springer was 
an active member of the Ladies' Union Aid Society in St. 
Louis, from the date of its organization in August, 1861, to its 
final disbanding — October, 1865 — in the deliberations of which 
her counsel always had great weight and influence. During the 
four years of its varied and useful labors for the soldiers and their 
families, she has been among its most diligent workers. In the 
winter of 1862, the Society took charge of the labor of making 
up hospital garments, given out by the Medical Purveyor of the 
department, and she superintended the whole of this important 
work during that winter, in Avhich one hundred and twenty-seven 
thousand five hundred garments were made. 

Mrs. Springer is a highly educated woman, of great moral 
worth, devoted to the welfare of the soldier, inspired by sincere 
love of country, and a high sense of Christian duty. No one 
will be more gratefully remembered by thousands of soldiers and 
their families, to whom she has manifested kindness, and a warm 
interest in their welfare. These services have been gratuitously 
rendered, and she has given up customary recreations, and sac- 
rificed ease and social pleasure to attend to these duties of hu- 
manity. Her reward will be found in the consciousness of having 
done good to the defenders of her native land, and in the bless- 
ing of those who were ready to perish, to Avhom her kind ser- 
vices, and words of good cheer came as a healing balm in the 
hour of despondency, and strengthened them for a renewal of 
their efforts in the cause of country and liberty. 

Among the devoted women who have made themselves mar- 
tyrs to the work of helping our patriotic soldiers and their fami- 
lies in St. Louis, was the late Mrs. Mary E. Palmer. She 
was born in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, June 28th, 1827, and 
her maiden name was Locker. She was married in February, 
1847, to Mr. Samuel Palmer. In 1855 she removed to Kansas, 
and in 1857 returned as far eastward as St. Louis, where she 
resided until her death. 



641 

In tlie beginning of the war, when battles began to be fought, 
and the sick and wounded were brought to our hospitals to be 
treated and cared for, Mrs. Palmer with true patriotic devo- 
tion and womanly sympathy offered her services to this good 
cause, and after a variety of hospital work in the fall of 1863, 
she entered into the service of the Ladies' Union Aid Society of 
St. Louis as a regular visiter among the soldiers' families, many 
of whom needed aid and work, during the absence of their natural 
protectors in the army. It was a field of great labor and useful- 
ness; for in so large a city there were thousands of poor women, 
whose husbands often went months without pay, or the means of 
sending it home to their families, who were obliged to appeal for 
assistance in taking care of themselves and children. To prevent 
imposition it was necessary that they should be visited, the requi- 
site aid rendered, and sewing or other work provided by which 
they could earn a part of their own support, a proper discrimina- 
tion being made between the worthy and unworthy, the really 
suffering, and those who would impose on the charity of the 
society under the plea of necessity. 

In this work Mrs. Palmer was most faithful and constant, 
going from day to day through a period of nearly two years, in 
summer and winter, in sunshine and storm, to the abodes of these 
people, to find out their real necessities, to report to the society 
and to secure for them the needed relief. 

Her labors also extended to many destitute families of refugees, 
who had found their way to St. Louis from the impoverished 
regions of Southern Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, 
Louisiana, and Texas, and who would have died of actual want, 
but for the charity of the Government and the ministering aid 
of the Western Sanitary Commission and the I^adies' Union Aid 
Society. In her visits and her dispensations of charity Mrs. 
Palmer was always wise, judicious, and humane, and enjoyed the 
fullest confidence of the society in whose service she was engaged. 
In the performance of her duties she was always thoroughly con- 

81 



642 

scientiouSj and actuated by a high sense of religious duty. From 
an early period of her life she had been a consistent member of the 
Baptist Churchj and her Christian character was adorned by a 
thorough consecration to works of kindness and humanity which 
were performed in the spirit of Him, who, during his earthly 
ministry, " went about doing good.'^ 

By her arduous labors, which were greater than her physical 
constitution could permanently endure, Mrs. Palmer's health 
became undermined, and in the summer of 1865 she passed into 
a fatal decline, and on the 2d of August ended a life of usefulness 
on earth to enter upon the enjoyments of a beatified spirit in 
heaven. 



LADIES' AID SOCIETY OF PHILA 
DELPHIA. 




NE of the first societies formed by ladies to aid and care 
for the sick and wounded soldiers^ was the one whose 
name we have placed at the head of this sketch. The 
Aid Society of Cleveland, and we believe one in Bos- 
ton claim a date five or six days earlier, but no others. The 
ladies who composed it met on the 26th of April, 1861, and 
organized themselves as a society to labor for the welfare of the 
soldiers whether in sickness or health. They continued their 
labors with unabated zeal until the close of the war rendered 
them unnecessary. The officers of the society were Mrs. Joel 
Jones, President; Mrs. John Harris, Secretary; and Mrs. Ste- 
phen Colwell, Treasurer. Mrs. Jones is the widow of the late 
Hon. Joel Jones, a distinguished jurist of Philadelphia, and sub- 
sequently for several years President of Girard College. A quiet, 
self-possessed and dignified lady, she yet possessed an earnestly 
patriotic spirit, and decided business abilities. Of Mrs. Harris, 
one of the most faithful and persevering laborers for the soldiers 
in the field, throughout the war, we have spoken at length else- 
Avhere in this volume. Mrs. Colwell, the wife of Hon. Stephen 
Colwell, a man of rare philosophic mind and comprehensive 
views, who had acquired a reputation alike by his writings, and 
his earnest practical benevolence, was a woman every way worthy 
of her husband. 

It was early determined to allow Mrs. Harris to follow the 

643 



644 , 

promptings of her benevolent heart and go to the field, while her 
colleagues should attend to the work of raising supplies and 
money at home, and furnishing her with the stores she required 
for her own distribution and that of the zealous workers who 
were associated with her. The members of the society were con- 
nected with twenty different churches of several denominations, 
and while all had reference to the spiritual as well as physical 
welfare of the soldier, yet there was nothing sectarian or denomi- 
national in its work. From the fact that its meetings were held 
and its goods packed in the basement and vestry of Dr. Board- 
man's Church, it was sometimes called the Presbyterian Ladies' 
Aid Society, but the name, if intended to imply that its character 
was denominational, was unjust. As early as October, 1861, the 
pastors of twelve churches in Philadelphia united in an appeal to 
all into whose hands the circular might fall, to contribute to this 
society and to form auxiliaries to it, on the ground of its effi- 
ciency, its economical management, and its unsectarian character. 
The society, with but moderate receipts as compared with those 
of the great organizations, accomplished a great amount of good. 
Not a few of the most earnest and noble workers in the field were 
at one time or another the distributors of its supplies, and thus in 
some sense, its agents. Among these we may name besides Mrs. 
Harris, Mrs. M. M. Husband, Mrs. Mary W. Lee, Miss M. M. 
C. Hall, Miss Cornelia Hancock, Miss Anna M. Ross, Miss 
Nellie Chase, of Nashville, Miss Hetty K. Painter, Mrs. Z. 
Den ham. Miss Pinkham, Miss Biddle, Mrs. Sampson, Mrs. 
Waterman, and others. The work intended by the society, and 
which its agents attempted to perform was a religious as well as 
a physical one; hospital supplies were to be dispensed, and the 
sick and dying soldier carefully nursed ; but it was also a part of 
its duty to point the sinner to Christ, to warn and reprove the 
erring, and to bring religious consolation and support to the sick 
and dying; the Bible, the Testament, and the tract were as truly 
a part of its supplies as the clothing it distributed so liberally, or 



645 

the delicacies it provided to tempt the appetite of the sick. Mrs. 
Harris established prayer-meetings wherever it was possible in 
the camps or at the field hospitals, and several of the other ladies 
followed her example. 

In her first report, Mrs. Harris said: — "In addition to the 
dispensing of hospital supplies, the sick of two hundred and three 
regiments have been personally visited. Hundreds of letters, 
bearing last messages of love to dear ones at home, have been 
written for sick and dying soldiers. We have thrown something 
of home light and love around the rude couches of at least five 
hundred of our noble citizen soldiers, who sleep their last sleep 
along the Potomac. 

"We have been permitted to take the place of mothers and 
sisters, wiping the chill dew of death from the noble brow, and 
breathing words of Jesus into the ear upon which all other sounds 
fell unheeded. The gentle pressure of the hand has carried the 
dying one to the old homestead, and, as it often happened, by ti 
merciful illusion, the dying soldier has thought the face upon 
which his last look rested, was that of a precious mother, sister, 
or other cherished one. One, a German, in broken accents, whis- 
pered : ^ How good you have come, Eliza ; Jesus is always near 
me;' then, wrestling with that mysterious power, death, slept in 
Jesus. Again, a gentle lad of seventeen summers, wistfully then 
joyfully exclaimed: ^I knew she would come to her boy,' went 
down comforted into the dark valley. Others, many others still, 
have thrown a lifetime of trustful love into the last look, sighing 
out life with ^ Mother, dear mother V 

" It has been our Jdghest aim, whilst ministering to the tem- 
poral well-being of our loved and valued soldiers, to turn their 
thoughts and affections heavenward. We are permitted to hope 
that not a few have, through the blessed influence of religious 
tracts, soldiers' pocket books, soldiers' Bibles, and, above all, the 
Holy Scriptures distributed by us, been led Ho cast anchor upon 



646 

that which is within the veil, whither the forerunner is for us 
entered, even Jesus/ '' 

The society did not attempt, and wisely, to compete with the 
great commissions in their work. It could not supply an entire 
army or throw upon the shoulders of its hard-working voluntary 
agents the care of the sick and wounded of a great battle. Its 
field of operations was rather here and there a field hospital, the 
care of the sick and wounded of a single division, or at most of a 
small army corps, when not engaged in any great battles; the 
providing for some hundreds of refugees, the care of some of the 
freedmen, and the assistance of the families of the soldiers. 
Whatever it undertook to do it did well. Its semi-annual reports 
consisted largely of letters from its absent secretary, letters full 
of pathos and simple eloquence, and these widely circulated, pro- 
duced a deep impression, and stirred the sympathies of those who 
read, to more abundant contributions. 

As an instance of the spirit which actuated the members of this 
society we state the following incident of which we were person- 
ally cognizant; one of the officers of the society soon after the 
commencement of the war had contributed so largely to its funds 
that she felt that only by some self-denial could she give more. 
Considering for a time where the retrenchment should begin, she 
said to the members of her family ; " these soldiers who have gone 
to fight our battles have been willing to hazard their lives for us, 
and we certainly cannot do too much for them. Now, I propose, 
if you all consent, to devote a daily sum to the relief of the army 
while the war lasts, and that we all go without some accustomed 
luxury to procure that sum. Suppose we dispense with our des- 
sert during the war?" Her family consented, and the cost of the 
dessert was duly paid over to the society as an additional dona- 
tion throughout the war. 

The society received and expended during the four years end- 
ing April 30, 1865, twenty-four thousand dollars in money, 
beside five hundred and fifty dollars for soldiers' families; and 



ladies' aid society of PHILADELPHIA. 647 

seven hundred dollars with accumulated interest for aiding dis- 
abled soldiers to reach their homes. The supplies distributed 
were worth not far from one hundred and twenty-five thousand 
dollars, aside from those sent directly to Mrs. Harris from indi- 
viduals and societies, which were estimated at fully two hundred 
thousand dollars. 

In this connection it may be well to say something of two other 
associations of ladies in Philadelphia for aiding the soldiers, 
which remained independent of the Sanitary or Christian Com- 
missions through the war, and which accomplished much good. 

The Penn Eelief Association was organized early in 1862, 
first by the Hicksite Friends, to demonstrate the falsity of the 
commonly received report that the ^' Friends,'' being opposed to 
war, would not do anything for the sick and wounded. Many 
of the "Orthodox Friends" afterwards joined it, as well as con- 
siderable numbers from other denominations, and it proved itself 
a very efficient body. Mrs. Rachel S. Evans was its President, 
and Miss Anna P. Little and Miss Elizabeth NcAvport its active 
and hard-working Secretaries, and Miss Little doubtless expressed 
the feeling Avhich actuated all its members in a letter in which 
she said that " while loyal men were suffering, loyal women must 
work to alleviate their sufferings." The " Penn Relief" collected 
supplies to an amount exceeding fifty thousand dollars, which 
were almost wholly sent to the "front," and distributed by such 
judicious and skilful hands as Mrs. Husband, Mrs. Hetty K. 
Painter, Mrs. Mary W. Lee, and Miss Anna Carver. 

"The Soldiers' Aid Association," was organized on the 
28th of July, 1862, mainly through the efforts of Mrs. Mary A. 
Brady, a lady of West Philadelphia, herself a native of Ireland, 
but the wife of an English lawyer, who had made his home in 
Philadelphia, in 1849. Mrs. Brady was elected President of the 
Association, and the first labors of herself and her associates were 
expended on the Satterlee Hospital, one of those vast institutions 



648 

created by the Medical Department of the Government, which 
had over three thousand beds, each during those dark and dreary- 
days occupied by some poor sufferer. In this great hospital these 
ladies found, for a time, full employment for the hearts and hands 
of the Committees who, on their designated days of the week, 
ministered to these thousands of sick and wounded men, and 
from the depot of supplies which the Association had established 
at the hospital, prepared and distributed fruits, food skilfully pre- 
pared, and articles of hospital clothing, of which the men were 
greatly in need. Those cheering ministrations, reading and sing- 
ing to the men, writing letters for them, and the dressing and ap- 
plying of cooling lotions to the hot and inflamed wounds were not 
forgotten by these tender and kind-hearted women. 

But Mrs. Brady looked forward to work in other fields, and 
the exertion of a wider influence, and though for months, she and 
her associates felt that the present duty must first be done, she 
desired to go to the front, and there minister to the wounded be- 
fore they had endured all the agony of the long journey to the 
hospital in the city. The patients of the Satterlee Hospital were 
provided with an ample dinner on the day of the IN^ational 
Thanksgiving, by the Association, and as they were now dimin- 
ishing in numbers, and the Auxiliary Societies, which had sprung 
up throughout the State, had poured in abundant supplies, Mrs. 
Brady felt that the time had come when she could consistently 
enter upon the work nearest her heart. In the winter of 1863, 
she visited Washington, and the hospitals and camps which were 
scattered around the city, at distances of from five to twenty 
miles. Here she found multitudes of sick and wounded, all suf- 
fering from cold, from hunger, or from inattention. " Camp 
Misery,'^ with its twelve thousand convalescents, in a condition 
of intense wretchedness moved her sympathies, and led her to do 
what she could for them. She returned home at the beginning 
of April, and her preparations for another journey were hardly 
made, before the battles of Chancellorsville and its vicinity oc- 



649 

curred. Here at the great field hospital of Sedgwick^s (Sixth) 
Corps, she commenced in earnest her labors in the care of the 
wounded directly from the field. For five weeks she worked 
with an energy and zeal which were the admiration of all who 
saw her, and then as Lee advanced toward Pennsylvania, she re- 
turned home for a few days of rest. 

Then came Gettysburg, with its three days of terrible slaugh- 
ter, and Mrs. Brady was again at her work day and night, fur- 
nishing soft food to the severely wounded, cooling drinks to the 
thirsty and fever-stricken, soothing pain, encouraging the men to 
heroic endurance of their sufferings, everywhere an angel of com- 
fort, a blessed and healing presence. More than a month was 
spent in these labors, and at their close Mrs. Brady returned to 
her work in the Hospitals at Philadelphia, and to preparation for 
the autumn and winter campaigns. When early in January, 
General Meade made his Mine Run Campaign, Mrs. Brady had 
again gone to the front, and was exposed to great vicissitudes of 
weather, and was for a considerable time in peril from the ene- 
my's fire. Her exertions and exposures at this time brought on 
disease of the heart, and her physician forbade her going to the 
front again. She however made all the preparations she could 
for the coming campaign, and hoped, though vainly, that she 
might be permitted again to enter upon the work she loved. 
When the great battles of May, 1864, were fought, the dreadful 
slaughter which accompanied them, so disquieted her, that it ag- 
gravated her disease, and on the 27th of May, she died, greatly 
mourned by all who knew her worth, and her devotion to the 
national cause. 

The Association continued its work till the close of the war. 
The amount of its disbursements, we have not been able to 
af' certain. 

82 



WOMEN'S RELIEF ASSOCIATION OF 
BROOKLYN AND LONG ISLAND. 




HE city of Brooklyn, Long Island, and the Island of 
which it forms the Western extremity, were from the 
commencement of the war intensely patriotic. Regi- 
ment after regiment was raised in the city, and its quota 
filled from the young men of the city, and the towns of the 
island, till it seemed as every man of military age, and most of the 
youth between fifteen and eighteen had been drawn into the 
army. An enthusiastic zeal for the national cause had taken as 
complete possession of the women as of the men. Everywhere 
were seen the badges of loyalty, and there was no lack of patient 
labor or of liberal giving for the soldiers on the part of those who 
had either money or labor to bestow. The news of the first bat- 
tle was the signal for an outpouring of clothing, hospital stores, 
cordials, and supplies of all sorts, which were promptly forwarded 
to the field. After each successive engagement, this was repeated, 
and at first, the Young Men's Christian Association of the city, 
a most efficient organization, undertook to be the almoners of a 
part of the bounty of the citizens. Distant as was the field of 
Shiloh, a delegation from the Association went thither, bearing a 
large amount of hospital stores, and rendered valuable assistance 
to the great numbers of wounded. Other organizations sprang 
up, having in view the care of the wounded and sick of the army, 
and many contributors entrusted to the earnest workers at Wash- 
ington, the stores they were anxious to bestow upon the suffering. 

650 



RELIEF ASSOCIATION OF BROOKLYN AND LONG ISLAND. 651 

After the great battles of the summer and autumn of 1862, large 
numbers of the sick and wounded were brought to Brooklyn, for 
care and treatment filling at one time three hospitals. They 
came often in need of all things, and the benevolent women of 
the city formed themselves into Committees, to visit these hospitals 
in turn, and prepare and provide suitable dishes, delicacies, and 
special diet for the invalid soldiers, to furnish such clothing as 
was needed, to read to them, write letters for them, and bestow 
upon them such acts of kindness as should cause them to feel 
that their services in defense of the nation were fully appreciated 
and honored. 

There was, however, in these varied efforts for the soldiers a 
lack of concentration and efficiency which rendered them less ser- 
viceable than they otherwise might have been. The different 
organizations and committees working independently of each 
other, not unfrequently furnished over-abundant supplies to some 
regiments or hospitals, while others were left to lack, and many 
who had the disposition to give, hesitated from want of know- 
ledge or confidence in the organizations which would disburse 
the funds. The churches of the city though giving freely w^ien 
called upon, were not contributing systematically, or putting forth 
their full strength in the service. It was this conviction of the 
need of a more methodical and comprehensive organization to 
which the churches, committees, and smaller associations should 
become tributary, which led to the formation of the Women's 
Relief Association, as a branch of the United States Sanitary 
Commission. This Association was organized November 23d, 
1862, at a meeting held by the Ladies of Brooklyn, in the Lec- 
ture Room of the Church of the Pilgrims, and Mrs. Mariamne 
Fitch Stranahan, was chosen President, and Miss Kate E. Wa- 
terbury, Secretary, with an Executive Committee of twelve ladies 
of high standing and patriotic impulses. The selection of Presi- 
dent and Secretary was eminently a judicious one. Mrs. Stran- 
ahan was a native of Westmoreland, Oneida County, New York, 



652 woman's work in the civil war. 

and liad received for the time, and the region in which her child- 
hood and youth was passed, superior advantages of education. 
She was married in 1837, to Mr. James S. T. Stranahan, then a 
merchant of Florence, Oneida County, New York, but who re- 
moved with his family in 1840, to Newark, New Jersey, and in 
1845, took up his residence in Brooklyn. Here they occupied a 
high social position, Mr. Stranahan having been elected a Repre- 
sentative to the Thirty-fourth Congress, and subsequently ap- 
pointed to other positions of responsibility in the city and State. 
Mrs. Stranahan was active in every good work in the city of her 
adoption, and those who knew her felt that they could confide in 
her judgment, her discernment, her tact, and her unflinching in- 
tegrity and principle. For eight years she was the first Direc- 
tress of the ^^ Graham Institute, for the relief of Aged and 
Indigent Females,'' a position requiring the exercise of rare 
abilities, and the most skilful management, to harmonize the dis- 
cords, and quiet the misunderstandings, inevitable in such an 
institution. Her discretion, equanimity, and tact, were equal to 
the duties of the place, and under her administration peace and 
quiet reigned. It was probably from the knowledge of her exe- 
cutive abilities, that she was unanimously chosen to preside over 
the Women's Relief Association. This position was also one re- 
quiring great tact and skill in the presiding officer. About eighty 
churches of different denominations in Brooklyn, cooperated in 
the work of the Association, and it had also numerous auxiliaries 
scattered over the Island. These diverse elements were held to- 
gether in perfect harmony, by Mrs. Stranahan's skilful manage- 
ment, till the occasion ceased for their labors. The Association 
was from first to last a perfect success, surpassing in its results 
most of the branches of the Commission, and surpassed in the 
harmony and efficiency of its action by none. 

In her final report Mrs. Stranahan said: "The aggregate of 
our efforts including the results of our Great Fair, represents a 
money value of not less than half a million of dollars." Three 



BELIEF ASSOCIATION OF BEOOKLYN ANI» LONG ISLAND. 653 

hundred thousand dollars of this sum were paid into the treasury 
of the United States Sanitary Commission in cash; and hospital 
supplies were furnished to the amount of over two hundred thou- 
sand more. The Great Fair of Brooklyn had its origin in the 
Women's Eelief Association. At first it was proposed that 
Brooklyn should unite with ISTew York in the Metropolitan 
Fair; but on further deliberation it was thought that a much 
larger result would be attained by an independent effort on the 
part of Brooklyn and Long Island, and the event fully justified 
the opinion. The conducting of such a fair involved, however, 
an excessive amount of labor on the part of the managers; and 
notwithstanding the perfect equanimity and self-possession of 
Mrs. Stranahan, her health was sensibly affected by the exertions 
she was compelled to make to maintain the harmony and effi- 
ciency of so many and such varied interests. It is much to say, 
but the proof of the statement is ample, that no one of the Sani- 
tary Fairs held from 1863 to 1865 equalled that of Brooklyn in 
its freedom from all friction and disturbing influences, in the 
earnestness of its patriotic feeling, and the complete and perfect 
harmony which reigned from its commencement to its close. 
This gratifying condition of affairs was universally attributed to 
the extraordinary tact and executive talent of Mrs. Stranahan. 

Rev. Dr. Spear, her pastor, in a touching and eloquent memo- 
rial of her, uses the following language in regard to the success of 
her administration as President of the Women's Relief Associa- 
tion ; " It is due to truth to say that this success depended very 
largely upon her wisdom and her efforts. She was the right 
woman in the right place. She gave her time to the work with 
a zeal and perseverance that never faltered, and with a hopeful- 
ness for her country that yielded to no discouragement or 
despondency. As a presiding officer she discharged her duties 
with a self-possession, courtesy, skill, and method, that com- 
manded universal admiration. She had a quick and judicious 
insight into the various ways and means by which the meetings 



654 

of the Association would be rendered interesting and attractive. 
The business part of the work was constantly under her eye. 
No woman ever labored in a sphere more honorable; and but 
few women could have filled her place. Her general temper of 
mind, her large and catholic views as a Christian, and then her 
excellent discretion, eminently fitted her to combine all the 
churches in one harmonious and patriotic effort. This was her 
constant study; and well did she succeed. As an evidence of 
the sentiments with which she had inspired her associates, the 
following resolution offered at the last meeting of the Association, 
and unanimously adopted, will speak for itself: — 

" ' Resolved, That the thanks of the Women's Eelief Association are pre-emi- 
nently due to our President, Mrs. J. S. T. Stranahan, for the singular ability, 
wisdom, and patience with which she has discharged the duties of her office, at 
all times arduous, and not unfrequently requiring sacrifites to which nothing 
short of the deepest love of country could have been equal. It is due to justice, 
and to the feelings of our hearts, to say that the usefulness, the harmony, and 
the continued existence of the Women's Belief Association, through the long 
and painful struggle, now happily ended, have been in a large measure owing 
to the combination of rare gifts, which have been so conspicuous to us all in the 
guidance of our public meetings, and which have marked not less the more 
unnoticed, but equally essential, superintendence of the work in private.' " 

The Rev. Dr. Bellows, President of the United States Sani- 
tary Commission, thus speaks of Mrs. Stranahan and of the 
Brooklyn Woman's Relief Association, of which she was the 
head: 

"Knowing Mrs. Stranahan only in her official character, as 
head of the noble band of women who through the war, by their 
admirable organization and efficient, patient working, made 
Brooklyn a shining example for all other cities — I wonder that 
she should have left so deep a personal impression upon my 
heart; and that from a dozen interviews confined wholly to one 
subject, I should have conceived a friendship for her which it 
commonly takes a life of various intercourse and intimate or 
familiar relations to establish. And this is the more remarkable, 



EELIEF ASSOCIATION OF BEOOKLYN AND LONG ISLAND. 655 

because her directness, clearness of intention, and precision of 
purpose always kept her confined, in the conversations I held 
with her, to the special subject on which we met to take counsel. 
She had so admirably ordered an understanding, was so business- 
like and clear in her habits of mind, that not a minute was lost 
with her in beating the l)ush. With mild determination, and in 
a gentle distinctness of tone, she laid her views or wishes before 
me, in a way that never needed any other explanation or enforce- 
ment than her simple statement carried with it. In few, precise, 
and transparent words, she made known her business, or gave 
her opinion, and wasted not a precious minute in generalities, or 
on matters aside from our common object. This rendered my 
official intercourse with her peculiarly satisfactory. She always 
knew just what she wanted to say, and left no uncertainty as to 
what she had said; and what she said, had always been so care- 
fully considered, that her wishes were full of reason, and her 
advice full of persuasion. She seemed to me to unite the greatest 
discretion with the finest enthusiasm. As earnest, large, and 
noble in her views of what was due to the National cause, as the 
most zealous could be, she was yet so practical, judicious, and 
sober in her judgment, that what she planned, I learned to regard 
as certain of success. No one could see her presiding with min- 
gled modesty and dignity over one of the meetings of the Women's 
Relief Association, without admiration for her self-possession, 
propriety of utterance, and skill in^furthering the objects in view. 
I have always supposed that her wisdom, resolution, and perse- 
verance, had a controlling influence in the glorious success of the 
Brooklyn Relief Association — the most marked and memorable 
fellowship of women, united from all sects and orders of Chris- 
tians, in one practical enterprise, that the world ever saw." 

After the disbanding of the Women's Relief Association, Mrs. 
Stranahan, though retaining her profound interest in the welfare 
of her country, and her desire for its permanent pacification by 
such measures as should remove all further causes of discord and 



656 

strife, returned to the quiet of her home, and except her connec- 
tion with the Graham Institute, gladly withdrew from any con- 
spicuous or public position. Her health was as we have said 
impaired somewhat by her assiduous devotion to her duties in 
connection with the Association, but she made no complaint, and 
her family did not take the alarm. The spring of 1866 found 
her so feeble, that it was thought the pure and bracing air of the 
Green Mountains might prove beneficial in restoring her strength, 
but her days were numbered. On the 30th of August she died 
at Manchester, Vermont. 

In closing our sketch of this excellent woman, we deem it due 
to her memory to give the testimony of two clergymen who were 
well acquainted with her work and character, to her eminent 
abilities, and her extraordinary worth. Eev. Dr. Farley, says 
of her: 

" When I think of the amount of time, thought, anxious and 
pains-taking reflection, and active personal attention and effort 
she gave to this great work ; when I recall how for nearly three 
years, with other weighty cares upon her, and amid failing health, 
she contrived to give herself so faithfully and devotedly to carry- 
ing it on, I am lost in admiration. True, she had for coadjutors 
a company of noble women, worthy representatives of our great 
and beautiful city. They represented every phase of our social 
and religious life ; they were distinguished by all the various 
traits which are the growth of 'education and habit ; they had on 
many subjects few views or associations in common. In one 
thing, indeed, they were united — the desire to serve their country 
in her hour of peril, by ministering to the sufferings of her he- 
roic defenders in the field. Acting on this thought — knowing no 
personal distinctions where this was the prevailing sentiment — 
and treating all with the like courtesy — she had yet the nice tact 
to call into requisition for special emergencies the precise talent 
which was wanted, and give it its right direction. Now and 
then — strange if it had not been so — there would be some ques- 



RELIEF ASSOCIATION OF BROOKLYN AND LONG ISLAND. 657 

tioning of her proposed measures, some demur to, or reluctance 
to accept her suggestions; but among men, the case would be 
found a rare one, where a presiding officer carried so largely and 
uniformly, from first to last, the concurrent judgment and ap- 
proval of his compeers. 

" I shall always call her to mind as among the remarkable wo- 
men whom I have had the good fortune to know. With no 
especial coveting of notoriety, she was — as one might say — in the 
course of nature, or rather — as I prefer to say — in the order of 
the Divine Providence, called to occupy very responsible positions 
bearing largely on the public weal ; and she was not found want- 
ing. Nay, she was found eminently fit. All admitted it. And 
all find, now that she has been taken to her rest, that they owe 
her every grateful and honored remembrance.'' 

The Rev. W. J. Budington, D.D., who had known her ac- 
tivity and zeal in the various positions she had been called to fill, 
pays the following eloquent tribute to her memory : 

" I had known Mrs. Stranahan chiefly, in common with i\\Q 
citizens of Brooklyn, as the head of the ^ Women's Relief As- 
sociation,' and thus, as the representative of the patriotism and 
Christian benevolence of the Ladies of Brooklyn, in that great 
crisis of our national history which drew forth all that was best 
in our countrymen and countrywomen, and nowhere more than 
in our own city. Most naturally — inevitably, I may say — she became 
the presiding officer of this most useful and efficient Association. 
Possessed naturally of a strong mind, clear in her perceptions, 
and logical in her courses of thought, she had, at the outset of 
the struggle, the most decided convictions of duty, and entered 
into the work of national conservation Avith a heartiness and self- 
devotion, which, in a younger person, would have been called 
enthusiasm, but which in her case was only the measure of an 
enlightened Christianity and patriotism. She toiled untiringly, 
in season and out of season ; when others flagged, she supplied 
the lack by giving more time, and redoubling her exertions ; as 

83 



658 woman's work in the civil war. 

the war wore wearily on, and disasters came, enfeebling some, and 
confounding others, she rose to sublimer efforts, and supplied the 
ranks of the true and faithful who gathered round her, with the 
proper watchwords and fresh resources. I both admired and 
wondered at her in this regard ; and when success came, crown- 
ing the labors and sacrifices of our people, her soul, was less 
filled with mere exultation than with sober thoughtfulness as to 
what still remained to be done. * * =5^ * 

" I regard Mrs. Stranahan as one of the most extraordinary of 
that galaxy of women, whom the night of our country's sorrow 
disclosed, and whose light will shine forever in the land they 
have done their part — I dare not say, how great a part — to save.'' 

We should do gross injustice to this efficient Association, if we 
neglected to give credit to its other officers, for their faithfulness 
and persevering energy during the whole period of its existence. 
Especially should the services of its patient and hard-working 
Corresponding Secretary, Miss Kate E. Waterbury, be acknow- 
ledged. Next to the president, she was its most efficient officer, 
ever at her post, and performing her duties with a thoroughness 
and heartiness which called forth the admiration of all who wit- 
nessed her zeal and devotion. Miss Perkins, the faithful agent 
in charge of the depot of supplies and rooms of the Association, 
was also a quiet and persevering toiler for the promotion of its 
great objects. 



LADIES' UNION RELIEF ASSOCIA 
TIONS OF BALTIMORE. 




MIDST the malign influences of secession and treason, 
1] entire and unqualified devotion to the Union, shone 
with additional brightness from its contrast with sur- 
rounding darkness. In all portions of the South were 
found examples of this patriotic devotion, and nowhere did it 
display itself more nobly than in the distracted city of Baltimore. 
The Union people were near enough to the North with its patri- 
otic sentiment, and sufficiently protected by the presence of Union 
soldiery, to be able to act with the freedom and spontaneity de- 
nied to their compatriots of the extreme South, and they did act 
nobly for the cause of their country and its defenders. 

Among the ladies of Baltimore, few were more constantly or 
conspicuously employed, for the benefit of sufferers from the war, 
than Mrs. Elizabeth M. Streeter. With the modesty that al- 
most invariably accompanies great devotion and singleness of pur- 
pose she sought no public notice; but in the case of one so 
actively employed in good works, it was impossible to avoid it. 

More than one of the Associations of Ladies formed in Balti- 
more for the relief of soldiers, of their families, and of refugees 
from secession, owes its inception, organization, and successful 
career to the mind and energies of Mrs. Streeter. It may truly 
be said of her that she has refused no work which her hands 
could find to accomplish. 

Mrs. Streeter was the Avife of the late Hon. S. F. Streeter, Esq., 



659 



660 

a well-known citizen of Baltimore, a member of the city Govern- 
ment during the war, an active Union man, devoted to the cause 
of his country and her defenders as indefatigably as his admira- 
ble wife. Working in various organizations, he was made an 
almoner of the city funds bestowed upon the families of soldiers, 
and upon hospitals, and afterwards appointed in conjunction with 
George R. Dodge, Esq., to distribute the appropriation of the 
State, for the families of Maryland soldiers= Thus the two were 
continually w^orking side by side, or in separate spheres of labor, 
for the same cause, all through the dark days of the rebellion. 

Mrs. Streeter was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, her ances- 
tors, the Jacksons, having been among the original settlers of the 
old Colony, and she has doubtless inherited the ancestral love of 
freedom. For thirty years she has been a resident of Baltimore. 

On the 16th of October, 1861, she originated the Ladies' 
Union Relief Association, of Baltimore, and in connection with 
other zealous loyal ladies, carried on its operations for more than 
a year with great success. From this as a center, sprang other 
similar associations in different parts of the city, and connected 
with the various hospitals. 

After the battle of Antietam, Mrs. Streeter, with Mrs. Pan- 
coast, a most energetic member of the Association, spent some 
time on the field dispensing supplies, and attending to the wants 
of the wounded, suffering and dying. 

Exhausted by her labors and responsibilities, at the end of a 
year, Mrs. Streeter resigned her official connection with the La- 
dies' Relief Association, and after a brief period of repose, she 
devoted herself to personal visitation of the hospitals, dispensing 
needed comforts and delicacies, and endeavoring by conversation 
with the inmates to cheer them, stimulate their patriotism, and to 
make their situation in all respects, more comfortable. 

Subsequently, she connected herself with the hospital attached 
to the Union Relief Association, located at 120 South Eutaw 
Street, Baltimore. Up to the time of the discontinuance of the 



ladies' union relief association of BALTIMORE. G61 

work of the Association, she gave it her daily attendance, and 
added largely to its resources by way of supplies. 

At this time, Baltimore was thronged by the families of refu- 
gees, who were rendered insecure in their homes by the fact of 
their entertaining Union sentiments, or homeless, by some of the 
bands of marauders which followed the advance of the Confederate 
troops when they invaded Maryland, or, who perhaps, living unfor- 
tunately in the very track of the conflicting armies, found them- 
selves driven from their burning homesteads, and devastated 
fields, victims of a wanton soldiery. Destitute, ragged and 
shelterless, their condition appealed with peculiar force to the 
friends of the Union. State aid was by no means sufficient, and 
unorganized charity unavailable to any great extent. 

Mrs. Streeter was one of the first to see the need of systematic as- 
sistance for this class. On the 16th of November, 1863, the 
result of her interest w^as seen in the organization of the ^^ La- 
dies' Aid Society, for the Relief of Soldiers' Families," which 
included in its efforts the relief of all destitute female refugees. 
A house was taken more particularly to accommodate these last, 
and the Association, which consisted of twenty-five ladies, pro- 
ceeded to visit the families of soldiers and refugees in person, in- 
quiring into their needs, and dispensing money, food, clothing, 
shoes, fuel, etc., as required. Over twelve hundred families were 
thus visited and relieved, in addition to the inmates of the Home. 
For this purpose they received from the city and various asso- 
ciations about seven thousand dollars, and a large amount from 
private contributions. In this and kindred work, Mrs. Streeter 
was engaged till the close of the war. 

The second report of the Maryland Committee of the Christian 
Commission thus speaks of the services of the devoted women 
who proceeded to the field after the battle of Antietam, and there 
ministered to the wants of the suffering and wounded soldiers. 

'^ Attendance in the hospitals upon the wounded at Antietam, 
was required for several months after the battle. Services and sup- 



662 woman's work in the civil war. 

plies were furnished by the Committee, principally through the 
agency of the ladies of the Relief Associations, to whom the Com- 
mittee acknowledge its indebtedness for important and necessary 
labors, which none but themselves could so well perform. The 
hospitals were located near the battle-field, and the adjacent 
towns, and in Baltimore and Frederick cities. Connected with 
each of them there was a band of faithful and devoted women, 
who waited about the beds of the suffering objects of their con- 
cern, and ministered to their relief and comfort during the hours 
of their affliction. Through the months of September, October, 
and November, these messengers of mercy labored among the 
wounded of Antietam, and were successful in saving the lives of 
hundreds of the badly wounded. They had not yet cleared the 
hospitals, when other battles added to their number, and made 
new drafts for services, which were promptly and cheerfully 
rendered. '^ 

Many times the Committee take occasion to mention the valu- 
able services of the loyal ladies of Baltimore, and the services of 
Mrs. Streeter are specially noticed in the third report in connec- 
tion with the Invalid Camp Hospital located at the boundary of 
the city and county of Baltimore in the vicinity of Northern 
Avenue. 

^'The services to this camp, usually performed by ladies, were 
under the supervision of Mrs. S. F. Streeter, who visited the 
grounds daily, on several occasions several times a day. The 
Secretary of the Committee has frequently met Mrs. Streeter on 
her errand of benevolence, conveying to the sufferers the deli- 
cacies she had prepared. Her active and faithful services were 
continued until the breaking up of the camp." 

The ladies of Baltimore worked in connection with the Sani- 
tary and Christian Commissions, both of which organizations 
take occasion frequently to acknowledge their services. 

Late in 1864, Mrs. Streeter was called to deep affliction. Her 
noble-hearted and patriotic husband, who had been as active as 



ladies' union relief association of baltlmore. 663 

herself in all enterprises for the welfare of the soldiers, and tlie 
promotion of the cause for which the war was undertaken, was 
suddenly taken from her, falling a victim to fever contracted in 
his ministrations to the sick and wounded of the Army of the 
Potomac, and the home and city where his presence had been to 
her a joy and delight, became, since he was gone too full of 
gloom and sorrow to be borne. Mrs. Streeter returned to her 
New England home in the hope of finding there some relief from 
the grief which overwhelmed her spirit. 

Two other ladies of Baltimore, and doubtless many more, 
deserve especial mention in this connection. Miss Tyson, and 
Mrs. Beck. Active and efficient members of the Ladies' Relief 
Association of that city, they were also active and eminently 
useful in the field and general hospitals. To the hospital work 
they seem both to have been called by Mrs. John Harris, who 
to her other good qualities added that of recognizing instinct- 
ively, the women who could be made useful in the work in 
which she was engaged. 

Miss Tyson was with Mrs. Harris at French's Division Hos- 
pital, after Antietam, and subsequently at Smoketown General 
Hospital, and after six or eight weeks of labor there, was attacked 
with typhoid fever. Her illness was protracted, but she finally 
recovered and resumed her work, going with Mrs. Harris to the 
West, and during most of the year 1864, was in charge of the 
Low Diet Department of tlie large hospital on Lookout Moun- 
tain. Few ladies equalled her in skill in the preparation of suit 
able food and delicacies for those who needed special diet. Miss 
Tyson was a faithful, indefatigable worker, and not only gave 
her services to the hospitals, but expended largely of her own 
means for the soldiers. She was always, however, disposed to 
shrink from any mention of her work, and we are compelled to 
content ourselves with this brief mention of her great usefulness. 

Mrs. Beck was also a faithful and laborious aide to Mrs. 
Harris, at Falmouth, and afterwards at the West. She was, we 



664 

believej a native of. Philadelphia, though residing in Baltimore. 
Her earnestness and patience in many very trying circumstances, 
elicited the admiration of all who knew her. She was an excel- 
lent singer, and when she sang in the hospitals some of the pop- 
ular hymns, the words and melody would often awaken an 
interest in the heart of the soldier for a better life. 



MRS. C. T. FENN 




ERKSHIRE County, Massachusetts, has long been 
noted as the birth-place of many men and women dis- 
tinguished in the higher ranks of the best phases of 
American life, literature, law, science, art, philosophy, 
as well as religion, philanthropy, and the industrial and commer- 
cial progress of our country have all been brilliantly illustrated 
and powerfully aided by those who drew their first breath, and 
had their earliest home among the green hills and lovely valleys 
of Berkshire. Bryant gained the inspiration of his poems — sweet, 
tender, refined, elevating — from its charming scenery; and from 
amidst the same scenes Miss Sedgwick gathered up the quiet 
romance of country life, often as deep as silent, and wove it into 
those delightful tales which were the joy of our youthful hearts. 

The men of Berkshire are brave and strong, its women fair and 
noble. Its mountains are the green altars upon which they 
kindled the fires of their patriotism. And these fires brightened 
a continent, and made glad the heart of a nation. 

Berkshire had gained the prestige of its patriotism in two wars, 
and at the sound of the signal gun of the rebellion its sons — 
^' brave sons of noble sires'^ — ^young men, and middle-aged, and 
boys, sprang to arms. Its regiments were among the first to 
answer the call of the country and to offer themselves for its 
defense. Let BalFs Bluff and the Wilderness, the Chickahominy, 
and the deadly swamps and bayous of the Southwest, tell to the 

84 665 



666 woman's work in ihe civil war. 

listening world the story of their bravery, their endurance and 
their sacrifices. 

But these men who went forth to fight left behind them, in 
their homes, hearts as brave and strong as their own. If Berk- 
shire has a proud record of the battle-field, not less proud is that 
which might be written of her home work. Its women first gave 
their best beloved to the defense of the country, and then, in 
their desolate homes, all through the slow length of those hor- 
rible, sometimes hopeless years, by labor and sacrifice, by thought 
and care, they gave themselves to the more silent but not less 
noble work of supplying the needs and ministering to the com- 
forts of the sick and wounded soldiery. 

Foremost among these noble women, as the almoner of their 
bounty, and the organizer of their efforts, stands the subject of 
this sketch, Mrs. C. T. Fenn, of Pittsfield, whose devotion to the 
work during the entire war was unintermitted and untiring. 

Mrs. Fenn, whose maiden name was Dickinson, was born in 
Pittsfield just before the close of the last century, and with the 
exception of a brief residence in Boston, has passed her entire life 
there. Her husband. Deacon Curtis T. Fenn, an excellent citi- 
zen, and enterprising man of business, in his "haste to be rich," 
was at one time tempted to venture largely, and became bound 
for others. The result was a failure, and a removal to Boston 
with the idea of retrieving his fortunes in new scenes. Here his 
only son, a promising young man of twenty-two years, fell ill, 
and with the hope of arresting his disease, and if possible saving 
his precious life, his parents returned to his native place, giving 
up their flattering prospects in the metropolis. It was in vain, 
however — in a few months the insidious disease, always so fatal 
in New England, claimed its victim, and they were bereaved in 
their dearest hopes. 

This affliction did not change, but perhaps intensified, the 
character of Mrs. Fenn. She was now called to endure labor, 
and to make many sacrifices, while her husband was slowly win- 



MRS. C. T. FENN. 667 

ning his way back to competence. But ever full of kindness and 
sympathy^ she devoted her time more unsparingly to doing good. 
Her name became a synonym for spontaneous benevolence in her 
native town. By the bed-sides of the sick and dying, in the 
home of poverty, and the haunts of disease, where sin, and sorrow 
and sufPering, that trinity of human woe are ever to be found, 
she became a welcome and revered visitant. All sought her in 
trouble, and she withheld not counsel nor aid in any hour of 
need, nor from any who claimed them. 

This was the prestige with which she was surrounded at the 
opening of the war, and her warm heart, as well as her patriotic 
instincts were at once ready for any work of kindness or aid it 
should develop. The following extract from the Berkshire 
County Eagle, of May, 1862, tells better than we can of the 
estimation in which she was held in her native town. 

" Mrs. Fenn, as most of our Pittsfield readers know, has been 
for many years the kind and familiar friend of the sick and suf- 
fering. Familiar with its shades, her step in the sick chamber 
has been as welcome and as beneficial as that of the physician. 
When the ladies were appealed to for aid for our soldiers suffer- 
ing from wounds or disease, she entered into the work with her 
whole soul and devoted all her time and the skill learned in 
years of attendance on the sick to the new necessities. Possessing 
the entire confidence of our citizens, and appealing to them per- 
sonally and assiduously, she was met by generous and well selected 
contributions which we have, from time to time, chronicled. In 
her duties at the work room, in preparing the material contributed, 
she has had constant and reliable assistance, but very much less 
than was needed, a defect which we hope will be remedied. 
Surely many of our ladies have leisure to relieve her of a portion 
of her work, and we trust that some of our patriotic boys will 
give their aid, for we learn that even such duties as the sweeping 
of the rooms devolve upon her. 

"Knowing that Mrs. Fenn's entire time had been occupied for 



668 

months in this great and good cause, and that all her time was 
not adequate to the manifold duties imposed upon her, we were 
somewhat surprised to see a letter addressed to her in print a few 
weeks since, complimenting her upon her efforts for the soldiers 
and asking her to give her aid in collecting hospital stores for the 
clinic at the Medical College. Surely thought we, there ought 
to be more than one Dorcas in Pittsfield. Indeed, it occurred to 
us that there were ladies here who, however repugnant to aid the 
soldiers of the North, could, without violence to their feelings so 
far as the object is concerned, gracefully employ a share of their 
elegant leisure in the service of the Medical College. But Mrs. 
Fenn did not refuse the new call, and having let her charity 
begin at home with those who are dearest and nearest to our 
hearts, our country's soldiers, expanded it to embrace those whose 
claim is also imperative, the poor whom we have always with us, 
and made large collections for the patients of the clinic. 

^'We have thus briefly sketched the services of this noble 
woman, partly in justice to her, but principally as an incentive 
to others.^' 

Very early in the war, a meeting of the ladies of Pittsfield 
was called with the intention of organizing the services, so en- 
thusiastically proffered on all hands, for the benefit of the sol- 
diers. It was quite numerously attended, and the interest and 
feeling was evidently intense. But they failed to organize any- 
thing beyond a temporary association. All wanted to work, but 
none to lead. All looked to Mrs. Fenn as head and leader, while 
she was more desirous of being hand and follower. JSTo consti- 
tution was adopted, nor officers elected. But as the general ex- 
pression of feeling seemed to be that all should be left in the 
hands of Mrs. Fenn, the meeting adjourned with a tacit under- 
standing to that effect. 

And so it remained until the close of the work. Mrs. Fenn 
continued to be the life and soul of the movement, and there was 
never any organization. In answer to her appeals, the people of 



MRS. C. T. FENN. 669 

Pittsfield^ of many towns in Berkshire, as well as numbers of 
the adjoining towns in the State of New York, forwarded to her 
their various and liberal contributions. She hired rooms in one 
of the business blocks, where the ladies were invited to meet 
daily for the purpose of preparing clothing, lint, and bandages, 
and where all articles and money were to be sent. 

Such was the confidence and respect of the people, that they 
freely placed in her hands all these gifts, without stint or fear. 
She received and disbursed large sums of money and valuable 
stores of all kinds, and to the last occupied this responsible posi- 
tion without murmur or distrust on the part of any, only from 
time to time acknowledging her receipts through the public 
prints. 

Pittsfield is a wealthy town, with large manufacturing inter- 
ests, and Mrs. Fenn was well sustained and aided in all her 
efforts, by valuable contributions. She received also the most 
devoted and efficient assistance from numerous ladies. Among 
these may be named, Mrs. Barnard, Mrs. Oliver, during the 
whole time, Mrs. Brewster, Mrs. Dodge, Mrs. Pomeroy, and 
many others, either constantly or at all practicable periods. Young 
ladies, reared in luxury, and unaccustomed to perform any 
laborious services in their own homes, would at the Sanitary 
Rooms sew swiftly upon the coarsest work, and shrink from no 
toil. A few of this class, during the second winter of the war 
manufactured thirty-one pairs of soldiers' trowsers, and about 
fifty warm circular capes from remnants of heavy cloth contributed 
for this use by Robert Pomeroy, Esq., a wealthy manufacturer 
of Pittsfield. The stockings, mittens of yarn and cloth, and hos- 
pital clothing of every variety, are too numerous to be men- 
tioned. 

Meanwhile supplies of every kind and description poured in. 
All of these Mrs. Fenn received, acknowledged, collected many 
of them by her own personal eflPorts, and then with her own hands 
arranged, packed, and forwarded them. During the war more 



670 

than nine thousand five hundred dollars' worth of supplies thus 
passed directly through her hands, and of these nothing save one 
barrel of apples at David's Island, was ever lost. 

During the entire four years of the war, she devoted three days 
of the week to this work, often all the days. But these three 
she called the "soldiers' days," and caused it to be known among 
her friends that this was not her time, and could not be devoted 
to personal work or pleasure. 

The Sanitary Rooms were more than half a mile distant from 
her own home. But on all these mornings, immediately after 
breakfast, she proceeded to them, on foot, (for she kept no car- 
riage), carrying with her, her lunch, and at mid-day, making 
herself that old lady's solace, a cup of tea, and remaining as long 
as she could see; busily at work, receiving letters, supplies, ac- 
knowledging the same, packing and unpacking, buying needed 
articles, cutting out and preparing work, and answering the nu- 
merous and varied calls upon her time. After the fatiguing 
labors of such a day, she would again return to her home on foot, 
unless, as was very frequently the case, some friend took her up 
in the street, or was thoughtful enough to come and fetch her in 
carriage or sleigh. When we reflect that these tasks were under- 
taken in all weathers, and at all seasons, by a lady past her 
sixtieth year, during so long a period, we are astonished at learn- 
ing that her health was never seriously injured, and that she was 
able to perform all her duties with comfort, and without yielding 
to fatigue. 

In addition to these labors, she devoted much time and personal 
attention to such sick and wounded soldiers as fell in her way, 
cheered and aided many a raw recruit, faltering on the thresh- 
hold of his new and dangerous career. TavIcc, at least, in each 
year, she herself proceeded to the hospitals at New York, or some 
other point, herself the bearer of the bounties she had arranged, 
and in some years she made more frequent visits. 

Early in her efforts, slie joined hands with Mrs. Col. G. T. M. 



MRS. C. T. FENN. 671 

Davis, of 'Ne^Y York, (herself a native of Pittsfield, and a sister 
of Robert Pomeroy, Esq., of that place), in the large and abun- 
dant efforts of that lady, for the welfare of the sick and wounded 
soldiers. Mrs. Davis was a member of the Park Barracks' La- 
dies' Aid Society, and through her a large part of the bounty of 
Berkshire was directed in that channel. The sick and weary, 
and fainting men at the Barracks, at the New England Rooms, 
and Bedloe's Island, were principally aided by this Association, 
which were not long in discovering the great value of the nicely 
selected, arranged and packed articles contained in the boxes 
which had passed through the hands of Mrs. Fenn, and came 
from Pittsfield. 

But the ladies of this Association, were desirous of concentrat- 
ing all their efforts upon the sufferers who had reached New York, 
while Mrs. Fenn, and her associates in Berkshire, desired to place 
no bound or limit to their divine charity. The soldiers of the 
whole army were their soldiers, and all had equal wants, and 
equal rights. Thus they often answered individual appeals from 
a variety of sources, and their supplies often helped to fit out ex- 
peditions, and were sent to Sherman's and Grant's, and Burnside's 
forces — to Annapolis, to Alexandria, to the Andersonville and 
Libby prisoners, and wherever the cry for help seemed most 
importunate. 

Among other things, Mrs. Fenn organized a plan for giving 
refreshments to the Aveary soldiers, who from time to time passed 
through Pittsfield. A signal gun would be fired when a trans- 
port-train reached the station at Richmond, ten miles distant, and 
the ladies would hasten to prepare the palatable lunch and cool- 
ing drink, against the arrival of the wearied men, and to dis- 
tribute them with their own hands. 

In the fall of 1862, Mrs. Fenn, herself, conveyed to New York 
the contribution of Berkshire, to the Soldiers' Thanksgiving Din- 
ner at Bedloe's Island. Among the abundance of good things 
thus liberally collected for this dinner, were more than a half ton 



672 



of poultiTj and four bushels of real Yankee doughnuts, besides 
cakeSj fruit and vegetables, in enormous quantities. These she 
greatly enjoyed helping to distribute. 

In the fall of 1864, she had a similar pleasure in contributing 
to the dinner at David's Island, where several thousand sick and 
wounded soldiers, (both white and colored) returned prisoners, 
and freedmen were gathered, fourteen boxes and parcels of similar 
luxuries. Various accidents combined to prevent her arrival in 
time, and her good things were consequently in part too late for 
the dinner. There was fortunately a plenty beside, and the Berk- 
shire's contribution was reserved for the feast of welcome to the 
poor starved wrecks so soon to come home from the privations 
and cruelties of Andersonville. 

Mrs. Fenn however enjoyed the occasion to the fullest, and was 
welcomed with such joy and gratitude, by the men who had so 
often shared the good things she had sent to the hospitals, as more 
than repaid her for all her labors and sacrifices. Many thousands 
of all classes, sick and wounded convalescents, and returned 
prisoners, white and colored troops, were then gathered there, 
and on the last day of her stay, Mrs. Fenn enjoyed the pleasure 
of personally distributing to each individual in that vast collec- 
tion of suffering men, some little gift from the stores she had 
brought. Fruit, (apples, or some foreign fruit), cakes, a delicacy 
for the failing appetite, stores of stationery, contributed by the 
liberal Berkshire manufacturers, papers, books — to each one some 
token of individual remembrance. And, with great gusto, she 
still tells how she came at last to the vast pavilion where the 
colored troops were stationed, and how the dusky faces bright- 
ened, and the dark eyes swam in tears, and the white teeth 
gleamed in smiles, half joyful, half sad ; and how, after bestow- 
ing upon each some token of her visit, and receiving their enthu- 
siastic thanks, she paused at the door, before bidding them fare- 
well, and asked if any were there who were sorry for their free- 
dom, regretted the price they had paid for it, or wished to return 



MK9. C. T. FENN. 673 

to their old masters, they should say — Aye. " The gentleman 
from Africa/^ perhaps for the first time in his life had a vote. 
He realized the solemnity of the moment. A dead silence fell 
upon the crowd, and no voice was lifted in that important affir- 
mative. " Very well, boys," again spoke the clear, kind voice 
of Mrs. Fenn. " Each of you who is glad to be free, proud to 
be a free soldier of his country, and ready for the struggles which 
freedom entails, will please to say Aye.'' Instantly, such a shout 
arose, as startled the sick in their beds in the farthest pavilion. 
No voice was silent. An irrepressible, exultant, enthusiastic cry 
answered her appeal, and told how the black man appreciated the 
treasure won by such blood and suffering. 

As has been said before, the personal labors of Mrs. Fenn were 
unintermitted as long as a sick or wounded soldier remained in 
any hospital. After all the hospitals in the neighborhood of New 
York were closed, except that of David's Island, months after 
the suspension of hostilities, she continued to be the medium of 
sending to the men there the contributions of Berkshire, and the 
supplies her appeals drew from various sources. 

The United Societies of Shakers, at Lebanon and Hauck, fur- 
nished her with many supplies — excellent fruit, cheese, eatables 
of various kinds, all of the best, cloth, linen new and old, towels, 
napkins, etc., etc., all of their own manufacture and freely offered. 
The Shakers are no less decided than the Quakers in their testi- 
mony against war, but they are also, as a body, patriotic to a 
degree, and full of kindly feelings which thus found expression. 

At one time Mrs. Fenn with a desire of saving for its legiti- 
mate purpose even the small sum paid for rent, gave up the 
rooms she had hired, and for more than a year devoted the best 
parlor of her own handsome residence to the reception of goods 
contributed for the soldiers. Thousands of dollars' worth of sup- 
plies were there received and packed by her own hands. 

Among other things accomplished by this indefatigable w^oman 
was the making of nearly one hundred gallons of blackberry 

85 



674 

cordial. Most of the bandages sent from Pittsfield were made 
by her, and so nicely, that Mrs. Fenn's bandages became 
famed throughout the army and hospitals. In all, they amounted 
to many thousand yards. One box which accompanied Burn- 
side's expedition, alone contained over four thousand yards of 
bandages, which she had prepared. 

Though the bounties she so lavishly sent forth were in a very 
large measure devoted to the hospitals in the neighborhood of 
New York, to the Soldiers' Eest in Howard Street; IN'ew Eng- 
land Rooms, Central Park, Ladies' Home and Park Barracks, 
they were still diffused to all parts of the land. The Army of 
the Potomac, and of the Southwest, and scores of scattered com- 
panies and regiments shared them. The Massachusetts Regi- 
ments, whether at home or abroad, were always remembered with 
the tenderest care, and especially was the gallant Forty-ninth, 
raised almost entirely in Berkshire, the object of that helpful 
solicitude which never wearied of well-doing. 

Almost decimated by disease in the deadly bayous of the 
Southwest, and in the fearful conflicts at Port Hudson and 
its neighborhood in the summer of 1863, the remnant at length 
returned to Berkshire to receive such a welcome and ovation at 
Pittsfield, on the 22d of August of that year, as has seldom been 
extended to our honored soldiery. About fifty of these men 
were at once taken to the hospital, and long lay ill, the constant 
recipients of unwearied kind attentions from Mrs. Fenn and her 
coadjutors. 

Much as we have said of the excellent and extensive work per- 
formed by this most admirable woman, space fails us for the 
detail of the half. Her work was so various, and so thoroughly 
good in every department, both head and hands were so entirely 
at the service of these her suffering countrymen, that it would be 
impossible to tell the half. The close of the war has brought her 
a measure of repose, but for such as she there is no rest while 
human beings suffer and their cry ascends for help. Her chari- 



MRS. C. T. FENN. 675 

ties are large to the freedmen, and the refugees who at the present 
time so greatly need aid. She is also lending her efforts to the 
collection of the funds needful for the erection of a monument to 
her fallen soldiers which Pittsfield proposes to raise at an expense 
of several thousands of dollars contributed by the people. 

At sixty-eight, Mrs. Fenn is still erect, active, and with a 
countenance beaming with animation and benevolence, bids fair 
to realize the wish which at sight of her involuntarily springs to 
all lips that her life may long be spared to the good words and 
works to which it is devoted. She has been the recipient of 
several handsome testimonials from her towns-people and from 
abroad, and many a token of the soldier's gratitude, inexpensive, 
but most valuable, in view of the laborious and painstaking care 
which formed them, has reached her hands and is placed with 
worthy pride among her treasures. 



MRS. JAMES HARLAN 




HERE have been numerous instances of ladies of high 
social position, the wives and daughters of generals of 
high rank, and commanding large bodies of troops, of 
Governors of States, of Senators and Representatives 
in Congress, of Members of the Cabinet, or of other Government 
officials, who have felt it an honor to minister to the defenders of 
their country, or to aid in such ways as were possible the blessed 
work of relieving pain and suffering, of raising up the down- 
trodden, or of bringing the light of hope and intelligence back to 
the dull and glazed eyes of the loyal whites who escaped from 
cruel oppression and outrages worse than death to the Union 
lines. Among these will be readily recalled, Mrs. John C. Fre- 
mont, Mrs. General W. H. L. Wallace, Mrs. Harvey, Mrs. 
Governor Salomon, Mrs. William H. Seward, Mrs. Ira Harris, 
Mrs. Samuel C. Pomeroy, Mrs. L. E. Chittenden, Mrs. John S. 
Phelps, and, though last named, by no means the least efficient, 
Mrs. James Harlan. 

Mrs. Harlan is a native of Kentucky, but removed to Indiana 
in her childhood. Here she became acquainted with Mr. Harlan 
to whom she was married in 1845 or 1846. In the rapid suc- 
cession of positions of honor and trust to which her husband was 
elevated by the people, as Superintendent of Public Instruction, 
President of Mount Pleasant University, United States Senator, 
Secretary of the Interior, and again United States Senator, Mrs. 
Harlan proved herself worthy of a position by his side. Possess- 
ore 



MES. JAMES HARLAN. 677 

ing great energy and resolution and a highly cultivated intellect, 
she acquitted herself at all times with dignity and honor. When 
the nominal became the actual war, and great battles were fought, 
she was among the first to go to the bloody battle-fields and 
minister to the wounded and dying. After the battle of Shiloh 
she was one of the first ladies on the field, and her labors were 
incessant and accomplished great good. Her position as the wife 
of a distinguished senator, and her energy and decision of cha- 
racter were used with eifect, and she was enabled to wring from 
General Halleck the permission previously refused to all appli- 
cants to remove the wounded to hospitals at Mound City, St. 
Louis, Keokuk, and elsewhere, where their chances of recovery 
were greatly improved. At Washington where she subsequently 
spent much of her time, she devoted her energies first to caring 
for the Iowa soldiers, but she soon came to feel that all Union 
soldiers were her brothers, and she ministered to all without dis- 
tinction of State lines. She lost during the war a lovely and 
beautiful daughter, Jessie Fremont Harlan, and the love which 
had been bestowed upon her overflowed after her death upon the 
soldiers of the Union. Her faithfulness, energy, and continuous 
labors in behalf of the soldiers, her earnestness in protecting them 
from wrongs or oppression, her quick sympathy with their sor- 
rows, and her zealous efforts for their spiritual good, will be 
remembered by many thousands of them all over the country. 
Mrs. Harlan early advocated the mingling of religious effort with 
the distribution of physical comforts among the soldiers, and 
though she herself would probably shrink from claiming, as some 
of her enthusiastic friends have done for her, the honor of inau- 
gurating the movement which culminated in the organization of 
the Christian Commission, its plan of operations was certainly 
fully in accordance with her own, and she was from the beginning 
one of its most active and efficient supporters. 

Mrs. Harlan was accompanied in many of her visits to the 
army by Mrs. Almira Fales, of whom we have elsewhere given 



678 

an account^ and whose husband having been the first State 
Auditor of Iowa, was drawn to her not only by the bond of a 
common benevolence, but by State ties, which led them both to 
seek the good of the soldiers in whom both felt so deep an inte- 
rest. Mrs. Harlan continued her labors for the soldiers till after 
the close of the war, and has been active since that time in secur- 
ing for them their rights. Her health was much impaired by 
her protracted efforts in their behalf, and during the year 1866 
she was much of the time an invalid. 



NEW ENGLAND SOLDIERS' RELIEF 
ASSOCIATION. 




HE " New England Society," of New York City, is an 
Association of long standing, for charitable and social 
purposes, and is composed of natives of New England, 
residing in New York, and its vicinity. Soon after 
the outbreak of the war, this society became the nucleus of a 
wider and less formal organization — the Sons of New England. 
In April, 1862, these gentlemen formed the New England Sol- 
diers' Relief Association, whose object was declared to be " to 
aid and care for all sick and wounded soldiers passing through 
the city of New York, on their way to or from the war.'' 
On the 8th of April, its "Home," a building well adapted to its 
purposes, was opened at No. 198 Broadway, and Dr. Everett 
Herrick, was appointed its resident Surgeon, and Mrs. E. A. 
Russell, its Matron. The Home was a hospital as well as a home, 
and in its second floor accommodated a very considerable number 
of patients. Its Matron was faithful and indefatigable in her 
performance of her duties, and in the three years of her service 
had under her care more than sixty thousand soldiers, many of 
them wounded or disabled. 

A Women's Auxiliary Committee was formed soon after the 
establishment of the Association, consisting of thirty ladies who 
took their turn of service as nurses for the sick and wounded 
through the year, and provided for them additional luxuries and 
delicacies to those furnished by the Association and the Govern- 

679 



680 

ment rations. These ladies, the wives and daughters of eminent 
merchants, clergymen, physicians, and lawyers of the city, per- 
formed their work with great faithfulness and assiduity. The 
care of the sick and wounded men during the night, devolved 
upon the Night Watchers' Association, a voluntary committee of 
young men of the highest character, who during a period of three 
years never failed to supply the needful watchers for the invalid 
soldiers. 

The ladies in addition to their services as nurses, took part in 
a choir for the Sabbath services, in which all the exercises were 
by volunteers. 

The Soldiers' Depot in Howard Street, New York, organized 
in 1863, was an institution of somewhat similar character to the 
New England Soldiers' Relief, though it recognized a primary 
responsibility to New York soldiers. It was founded and sus- 
tained mainly by State appropriations, and a very earnest and 
faithful association of ladies, here also bestowed their care and 
services upon the soldiers. Mrs. G. T. M. Davis, was active and 
prominent in this organization. 



PART IV. 



LADIES DISTINGUISHED FOR SERVICES AMONG THE FREEDMEN 
AND REFUGEES. 



MRS. FRANCES D. GAGE. 




N the 12th of October, 1808, was born in the town- 
ship of Union, Washington County, Ohio, Frances 
Dana Barker. Her father had, twenty years before 
that time, gone a pioneer to the Western wilds. His 
name was Joseph Barker, a native of New Hampshire. Her 
mother was Elizabeth Dana, of Massachusetts, and her maternal 
grandmother was Mary Bancroft. She was thus allied on the 
maternal side to the well-known Massachusetts families of Dana 
and Bancroft. 

During her childhood, schools were scarce in Ohio, and in the 
small country places inferior. A log-cabin in the woods was the 
Seminary where Frances Barker acquired the rudiments of edu- 
cation. The wolf's howl, the panther's cry, the hiss of the cop- 
perhead, often filled her young heart with terror. 

Her father was a farmer, and the stirring life of a farmer's 
daughter in a new country, fell to her lot. To spin the garments 
she wore, to make cheese and butter, were parts of her education, 
while to lend a hand at out-door labor, perhaps helped her to ac- 
quire that vigor of body and brain for which she has since been 
distinguished. 

She made frequent visits to her grandmother, Mrs. Mary Ban- 
croft Dana, whose home was at Belpre, Ohio, upon the Ohio 
river, only one mile from Parkersburg, Virginia, and opposite 
Blennerhasset's Island. Mrs. Dana, was even then a radical on 
the subject of slavery, and Frances learned from her to hate the 

683 



684 

word^ and all it represented. She never was on the side of the 
oppressor, and was frequently laughed at in childhood, for her 
sympathy with the poor fugitives from slavery, who often found 
their way to the neighborhood in which she lived, seeking kind- 
ness and charity of the people. 

It had not then become a crime to give a crust of bread, or a 
cup of milk to the "fugitive from labor,'^ and Mrs. Barker, a 
noble, true-thinking woman, often sent her daughter on errands 
of mercy to the neighboring cabins, where the poor creatures 
sought shelter, and would tarry a few days, often to be caught 
and sent back to their masters. Thus she early became familiar- 
ized with their sufferings, and their wants. 

At the age of twenty, on the 1st of January, 1829, Frances 
Barker became the wife of James L. Gage, a lawyer of McCon- 
nellsville, Ohio, a good and noble man, whose hatred of the 
system of slavery in the South, was surpassed only by that of 
the great apostle of anti-slavery. Garrison, himself. Moral in- 
tegrity, and unflinching fidelity to the cause of humanity, were 
leading traits of his character. 

A family of eight children engrossed much of their attention 
for many years, but still they found time to wage moral warfare 
with the stupendous wrong that surrounded them, and bore down 
their friends and neighbors beneath the leaden weight of its 
prejudice and injustice. 

Mrs. Gage records that "it never seemed to her to require any 
sacrifice to resist the popular will upon the subjects of freedom 
for the slave, temperance, or even the rights of woman. '^ They 
were all so manifestly right, in her opinion, that she could not 
but take her stand as their advocates, and it was far easier for 
her to maintain them than to yield one iota of her conscientious 
views. 

Thus she always found herself in a minority, through all the 
struggling years between 1832 and 1865. She had once an 
engagement with the editor of a " State Journal " to write weekly 



MES. FKANCES D. GAGE. 685 

for his columns during a year. This, at that time seemed to her 
a great achievement. But a few plain words from her upon the 
Fugitive Slave Law, brought a note saying her services were no 
longer wanted ; " He would not," the editor wrote, " publish sen- 
timents in his Journal, which, if carried out, would strike at the 
foundations of all law, order, and government," and added much 
good advice. Her reply was prompt: 

"Yours of is at hand. Thanking you for your unasked counsel, I cheer- 
fully retire from your columns. "Respectfully yours, 

"F.D.Gage." 

She has lived to see that editor change many of his views, and 
approach her standard. 

The great moral struggle of the thirty years preceding the war, 
in her opinion, required for its continuance far more heroism than 
that which marshalled our hosts along the Potomac, prompted 
Sheridan's raids, or Sherman's triumphant " march to the sea.'^ 

In all her warfare against existing wrong, that which she 
waged for the liberties of her own sex subjected her to the most 
trying persecution, insult and neglect. In the region of Ohio 
where she then resided, she stood almost alone, but she was never 
inclined to yield. Probably, unknown to herself, this very disci- 
pline was preparing her for the events of the future, and its 
supreme tests of her principles. 

A member of Congress once called to urge her to persuade her 
husband to yield a point of principle (which he said if adhered 
to would prove the political ruin of Mr. Gage) holding out the 
bribe of a seat in Congress, if he would stand by the old Whig 
party in some of its tergiversations, and insisting that if he per- 
sisted in doing as he had threatened, he would soon find himself 
standing alone. She promised the gentleman that she would 
repeat to her husband what he had said, and as soon as he had 
gone seized her pencil and wrote the following impromptu, which 
serves well to illustrate her firm persistence in any course she 
believes right, as well as the principle that animates her. 



C86 woman's work in the civil war. 



DARE TO STAND ALONE. 

" Be bold, be firm, be strong, be true, 
And dare to stand alone. 
Strike for the Eight whate'er ye do, 
Though helpers there be none. 

" Oh ! bend not to the swelling surge 

Of popular crime and wrong. 

'Twill bear thee on to Euin's verge 

With current wild and strong. 

"Strike for the Eight, tho' falsehood rail ■ 

And proud lips coldly sneer. 

A poisoned arrow cannot wound 

A conscience pure and clear. 

" Strike for the Eight, and with clean hands 

Exalt the truth on high, 
Thoul't find warm sympathizing hearts 
Among the passers by, 
♦ 

"Those who have thought, and felt, and prayed, 

Yet could not singly dare 
The battle's brunt; but by thy side 
Will every danger share. 

"Strike for the Eight. Uphold the Truth. 

Thou'lt find an answering tone 
In honest hearts, and soon no more 
Be left to stand alone." 

She handed this poem to the gentleman with whom she had 
been conversing, and he afterwards told her that it decided him 
to give up all for principle. He led off in his district in what 
was soon known as the Free Soil party, the root of the present 
triumphant Republican party. 

In 1853 the family of Mrs. Gage removed to St. Louis. Those 
who fought the anti-slavery battle in Massachusetts have little 
realization of the difficulty and danger of maintaining similar 
sentiments in a slaveholding community, and a slave State. Mrs. 
Gage spoke boldly whenever her thought seemed to be required, 



MRS. FRANCES D. GAGE. 687 

and soon found herself branded as an "abolitionist'' with every 
adjective appended that could tend to destroy public confidence. 

While Colonel Chambers, the former accomplished editor of 
the Missouri Republican lived, she wrote for his columns, and at 
one time summing up the resources of that great State, she ad- 
vanced this opinion: "Strike from your statute books the laws 
that give man the right to hold property in man, and ten years 
from this time Missouri will lead its sister State on the eastern 
shore of the Mississippi." 

After the publication of this article, Colonel Chambers was 
waited upon and remonstrated with by some old slaveholders, for 
allowing an abolitionist to write for his journal.- "Such senti- 
ments,'' they said, "would destroy the Union." "If your Union," 
replied he, "is based upon a foundation so unstable that one 
woman's breath can blow it down, in God's name let her do it. 
She shall say her say while I live and edit this paper." 

He died soon after, and Mrs. Gage was at once excluded from 
its columns, by the succeeding editors, refused payment for past 
labors, or a return of her manuscripts. 

The Missouri Democrat soon after hoisted the flag of Emanci- 
pation, under the leadership of Frank Blair. She became one of 
its correspondents, and for several years continued to supply its 
columns with an article once or twice a week. Appearing in 
1858 upon the platform of the Boston Anti-Slavery Society, she 
was at once excluded as dangerous to the interests of the party 
which the paper represented. 

During all the years of her life in Missouri Mrs. Gage fre- 
quently received letters threatening her with personal violence, 
or the destruction of her husband's property. Slaves came to her 
for aid, and were sent to entrap her, but she succeeded in evad- 
ing all positive difficulty and trial. 

During the Kansas war she labored diligently with pen, tongue, 
and hands, for those who so valiantly fought the oppressor in 
that hour of trial. She expected to be waylaid and to be made 



688 

to suffer for her temerity^ and perhaps she did; for about the 
close of that perilous year three disastrous fires, supposed to be 
the work of incendiaries, greatly reduced the family resources. 

This portion of the life of Mrs. Gage has been dwelt upon at 
considerable length, because she regards the struggle then made 
against the wickedness, prejudice, and bigotry of mankind, as the 
main bravery of her life, and that if there has been heroism in 
any part of it, it was then displayed. " If as a woman,^^ she says, 
^^to take the platform amidst hissing, and scorn, and newspaper 
vituperations, to maintain the right of woman to the legitimate 
use of all the talents God invests her with; to maintain the 
rights of the slave in the very ears of the masters; to hurl ana- 
themas at intemperance in the very camps of the dram-sellers; 
if to continue for forty years, in spite of all opposing forces, to 
press the triune cause persistently, consistently, and unflinchingly, 
entitles me to a humble place among those noble ones who have 
gone about doing good, you can put me in that place as it suits 
you.'' 

At the breaking out of the w^ar, by reason of her husband's 
failure in business at St. Louis, and his ill-health, Mrs. Gage 
found herself filling the post of Editor of the Home Department 
of an Agricultural paper in Columbus, Ohio. The call for help 
for the soldiers, was responded to by all ^oyal women. Mrs. 
Gage did what she could with her hands, but found them tied by 
unavoidable labors. She offered tongue and pen, and found them 
much more efficient agents. The war destroyed the circulation 
of the paper, and she was set free. 

The cry of suffering from the Freedmen reached her, and God 
seemed to speak to her heart, telling her that there was her mis- 
sion. 

In the autumn of 1862, without appointment, or salary, with 
only faith in God that she should be sustained, and with a firm 
reliance on the invincible principles of Truth and Justice, in the 



MES. FEANCES D. GAGE. 689 

hope of doing good^ she left Ohio, and proceeded directly to Port 
Royal. 

She remained among the freedmen of Beaufort, Paris, Fer- 
nandina, and other points, thirteen months ; administering also 
to the soldiers, as often as circumstances gave opportunity. Her 
own four boys were in the Union army, and this, if no more, 
would have given every " boy in blue," a claim upon her sym- 
pathy and kindness. 

In the fall of 1863, Mrs. Gage returned ISTorth, and with head 
and heart filled to overflowing with the claims of the great mis- 
sion upon which she had entered, she commenced a lecturing tour, 
speaking to the people of her ^^experiences among the Freedmen." 
To show them as they were, to give a truthful portrayal of Slav- 
ery, its barbarity and heinousness, its demoralization of master 
and man, its incompatibility with all things beautiful or good, 
its defiance of God and his truth ; and to show the intensely hu- 
man character of the slave, who, through this fearful ordeal of 
two hundred years, had preserved so much goodness, patient hope, 
unwavering trust in Jesus, faith in God, such desire for know- 
ledge and capability of self-support — such she felt to be her mis- 
sion, and as such she performed it ! She believed that by remov- 
ing prejudice, and inspiring confidence in the Emancipation 
Proclamation, and ll^' striving to unite the people on this great 
issue, she could do more than in any other way toward ending 
the war, and relieving the soldier — such was the aim of her lec- 
tures, while she never omitted to move the hearts of the audience 
toward those so nobly defending tlie Union and the Government. 

Thus, in all the inclement winter weather, through Pennsyl- 
vania, New York, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri, she pursued her 
labors of love, never omitting an evening when she could get an 
audience to address, speaking for Soldiers' Aid Societies, and 
giving the proceeds to those who worked only for the soldier, 
— then for Freedmen's Associations. She worked without fee or 
reward, asking only of those who were willing, to give enough to 
87 



690 

defray her expenses — for herself — thankful if she received, cheer- 
ful if she did not. 

Following up this course till the summer days made lecturing 
seem impossible, she started from St. Louis down the Mississippi, 
to Memphis, Vicksburg, and Natchez. On this trip she went as an 
unsalaried agent of the Western Sanitary Commission — ^receiving 
only her expenses, and the goods and provisions wherewith to 
relieve the want and misery she met among our suffering men. 

A few months' experience among the Union Refugees, and un- 
protected fugitives, or unprotected Freedmen, convinced her that 
her best work for all was in the lecturing field, in rousing the 
hearts of the multitude to good deeds. 

She had but one weak pan- of hands, while her voice might set 
a hundred, nay, a thousand pairs in motion, and believing that 
we err if we fail to use our best powers for life's best uses, she 
again, after a few months with the soldiers and other sufferers, 
entered the lecturing field in the West, speaking almost nightly. 

In the month of September, she was overturned in a carriage 
at Galesburg, Illinois. Some bones were broken, and she ^\as 
otherwise so injured as to be entirely crippled for that year. She 
has since been able to labor only occasionally, and in great weak- 
ness for the cause. This expression she uses for all struggle 
against wrong. "Temperance, Freedom, Justice to the negro, 
Justice to woman,'' she says, "are but parts of one great whole, 
one mighty temple whose maker and builder is God." 

Through all the vicissitudes of the past ; through all its years 
of waiting, her faith in Him who led, and held, and comforted, 
has never wavered, and to Him alone does she ascribe the Glory 
of our National Redemption. 



MRS, LUCY GAYLORD POMEROY. 




IST 1803^ some families from Bristol and Meriden, Con- 
necticut, removed to the wilderness of New York, and 
settled in what is now Otisco, Onondaga County. 
Among these were Chauncey Gaylord, a sturdy, ath- 
letic young man, just arrived at the age of twenty-one, and "a, 
little, quiet, black-eyed girl, with a sunny, thoughtful face, only 
eleven years old/' Her name was Dema Cowles. So the young 
man and the little girl became acquaintances, and friends, and in 
after years lovers. In 1817 they were married. Their first 
home was of logs, containing one room, with a rude loft above, 
and an excavation beneath for a cellar. 

In this humble abode was born Lucy Ann Gaylord, the sub- 
ject of this sketch, who afterwards became the wife of Samuel 
C. Pomeroy, United States Senator from Kansas. 

Plain and humble as was this home, it was a consecrated one, 
where God was worshipped, and the purest religious lessons 
taught. Mrs. Gaylord was a woman of remarkable strength of 
character and principles, one who carried her religion into all the 
acts of daily life, and taught by a consistent example, no less 
than by a wise precept. Her mother had early been widowed, 
and had afterwards married Mr. Eliakim Clark, from Massachu- 
setts, and had become the mother of the well-known twin-broth- 
ers, Lewis Gaylord, and "VYillis Gaylord Clark, destined to 
develope into scholars and poets, and to leave their mark upon 
the literature of America. She had been entrusted with the care 

691 



692 woman's work in the civil war. 

of these beautiful and noble boys for some years, and vras already 
experienced in duties of that kind, before children of her own 
were given her. Doubtless to her high order of intellect, refined 
taste, amiable disposition, and sterling good sense, all the children 
who shared her care are indebted to a great extent for the noble 
qualities they possess. 

Other children succeeded Lucy, and as the elder sister, she 
shared, in their primitive mode of life, her mother's cares and 
duties. Her character developed and expanded, and she grew in 
mental grace as in stature, loving all beautiful things and noble 
thoughts, and early making a profession of religion. 

By this time the family occupied a handsome rural homestead, 
where neatness, order, regularity, industry and kindness reigned, 
and where a liberal hospitalit}^ was always practiced. Here 
gathered all the large group of family relatives, here the aged 
grandmother Clark lived, and hither came her gifted twin sons, 
from time to time, as to their home. The most beautifal scenery 
surromided this homestead; peace, order, intelligence, truth and 
godliness abounded there, and amidst such influences Lucy Gay- 
lord had the training which led to the future usefulness of her 
life. Even in her youth she was the friend and safe counsellor 
of her brothers, as in her maturer years she was of her gifted 
husband. 

At eighteen she made a public profession of religion, and soon 
after the thought of consecrating herself to the missionary work 
took possession of her mind. To this end she labored and 
studied for several years, steadfastly educating herself for a 
vocation to which she believed herself called, though often 
afflicted with serious doubts as to whether she, being an only 
daughter, could leave her parents. 

In early life she became an earnest and efficient teacher in 
Sunday-schools, her intellectual pursuits furnishing her with 
ever fresh means of rendering her instruction interesting and 
useful to her classes. She undoubtedly at the first considered 



MES. LUCY GAYLORD POMEROY. 693 

this as a training for the work to which, in time, she hoped to 
devote herself. 

But this hope was destined to disappointment. One violent 
illness after another finally destroyed her health, and she never 
quite recovered the early tone of her system. Yet she worked 
on, doing good wherever the means presented. 

Soon afterwards she met with the great sorrow of her life. 
The young man to whom she was soon to be married, between 
whom and herself the strongest attachment existed, cemented by 
a mutual knowledge of noble qualities, was suddenly snatched 
from her, and she became a widow in all but the name. 

This sorrow still more refined and beautified her character. 
By degrees the sharpness of the grief wore away, and it became 
a sweet, though saddened memory. Eight years after her loss, 
she became the wife of Samuel C. Pomeroy, of Southampton, 
Massachusetts. "They were of kindred feelings in life's great 
work, had suffered alike by early bereavement, and were drawn 
together by that natural affinity which unites two lives in one." 

He had given up mercantile business in Western New York 
not long before, and had returned to his early home to care for 
the declining years of his aged parents. And this was the mis- 
sionary work to which Mrs. Pomeroy found herself appointed. 
She was welcomed heartily, and found her duties rendered light 
by appreciation and affection. 

Here, as elsewhere, Mrs. Pomeroy made herself actively useful 
beyond, as well as within, her home. She performed duties of 
Sabbath School and general religious instruction, that might be 
called arduous, especially when added to her domestic cares and 
occupations. These, with other labors, exhausted her strength, 
and a protracted season of illness followed. 

From that time, 1850, for five or six years, she continued to 
suffer, being most of the time very ill, her life often despaired of. 
During all this season of peculiar trial she never lost her faith 
and courage, even when her physicians gave no hope of her reco- 



694 

very, being contented to abide by the will of Providence, con- 
vinced that if God had any work for her to do He would spare 
her life. During this time her husband was often absent, being 
first in the Massachusetts Legislature, and afterwards sent out as 
Agent by the Northeastern Aid Society to Kansas, which they 
were desirous to settle as a free State. Into this last duty she 
insisted with energy that he should enter. During his absence 
she experienced other afflictions, but her health notwithstanding 
rallied, and as soon as possible she made preparations to remove 
to Kansas where Mr. Pomeroy wished to make a home. In the 
spring of 1857 she finally arrived there, and there she remained 
until the spring of 1861, when she accompanied her husband to 
Washington, when he went thither to take his seat in the 
Senate. 

The hardships and the usefulness of her life in Kansas are 
matters of history, and it is truly surprising to read how one so 
long an invalid was enabled to perform such protracted and 
exhausted labors. All who kncAV her there bear ample and 
enthusiastic testimony to the usefulness of her life. To the whites 
she was friend, hostess, counsellor, assistant, in sickness and in 
health. To the poor and despised blacks, striving to find free- 
dom, she was friend and teacher, even at the time when her near 
neighborhood to the slave State of Missouri, made the service 
most dangerous. Then followed the terrible famine year of 1860. 
During all that time she freely gave her services in the work of 
providing for the suiferers. Mr. Pomeroy, aided by the know- 
ledge he had acquired in his experience as Agent of Emigration, 
was able at once to put the machinery in motion for obtaining 
supplies from the East, and Mrs. Pomeroy transformed her home 
into an office of distribution, of which she was superintendent and 
chief clerk. It was a year that taxed far too heavily her already 
much exhausted strength. 

When she accompanied her husband to Washington in the 
spring, her health failed, cough and hoarseness troubled her, and 



MRS. LUCY GAYLORD POMEROY. 695 

she was obliged to leave for visits in her native air, and for a 
stay of some months at Geneva Water Cure. 

From the breaking out of the war Mrs. Pomeroy, on all occa- 
sions, prdved herself desirous of the welfare of our soldiers. 
The record of her deeds of kindness in their behalf is not as 
ample as that of some others, for her health forbade the active 
nursing, and visiting of the sick in hospitals, which is the most 
showy part of the work. But her contributions of supplies were 
always large; and she had always a peculiar care and interest in 
the religious and moral welfare of the volunteers, who, far from 
the influences of home, and exposed to new and numerous temp- 
tations, were, she felt, in more than one sense encircled by pecu- 
liar dangers. 

Only once did she revisit her Kansas home, and in the autumn 
of 1862 spent some months there. There was at that time a 
regiment in camp at Atchison, and she was enabled to do great 
good to the sick in hospital, not only with supplies, but by her 
own personal efforts for their physical and spiritual welfare. 

On her return to Washington she there entered as actively as 
possible into this work. Her form became known in the hos- 
pitals, and many a suffering man hailed her coming with a new 
light kindling his dimmed eyes. She brought them comforts and 
delicacies, and she added her prayers and her precious instruc- 
tions. She cared both for souls and bodies, and earned the 
immortal gratitude of those to whom she ministered. 

In January, 1863, her last active benevolent work was com- 
menced, namely the foundation of an asylum at the National 
Capital for the freed orphans and destitute aged colored women 
whom the war, and the Proclamation of Emancipation, had 
thrown upon the care of the benevolent. For several months 
she was actively engaged in this enterprise. A charter was im- 
mediately obtained, and when the Association was organized, 
^Irs. Pomeroy was chosen President. 

Almost entirely by her exertions, a building for the Asylum 



696 

was obtained, as well as some condemned hospital furniture, whicli 
was to be sold at auction by the Government, but was instead 
transferred — a most useful gift — to the Asylum. 

But when the time came, about the 1st of June, 1863, for the 
Association to be put in possession of the buildings and grounds 
assigned them, Mrs. Pomeroy was too ill to receive the keys, and 
the Secretary took her place. She was never able to look upon 
the fruit of her labors. Again, she had exhausted her feeble 
powers, and she was never more to rally. 

A slow fever followed, which at last assumed the form of 
typhoid. She lingered on, slightly better at times, until the 
17th of July, when preparations were completed for removing 
her to the Geneva Water Cure, and she started upon her last 
journey. She went by water, and arrived at New York very 
comfortably, leaving there again on the boat for Albany, on the 
morning of the 20th. But death overtook her before even this 
portion of the journey was finished. She died upon the passage, 
on the afternoon of July 20th, 1863. After her life of useful- 
ness and devotion, her name at last stands high upon the roll of 
martyr-women, whom this war has made. 



MARIA R. MANN 




MONG the heroic women who labored most efficiently 
and courageously during the late civil war for the good 
of our soldiers, and the poor ^^contrabands/' as the 
freed people were called, was Miss Maria R. Mann, an 
educated and refined woman from Massachusetts, a near relative 
of the first Secretary of the Board of Education of that re- 
nowned Commonwealth, who gave his life and all his great 
powers to the cause of education, and finished his noble career as 
the President of Antioch College, in Ohio. 

Miss Mann, is a native of Massachusetts, and spent the greater 
portion of her mature life previous to the war, as a teacher. In 
this, her chosen profession, she attained a high position, and for a 
number of years taught in the High Schools. As a teacher she 
was highly esteemed for her varied and accurate knowledge, the 
care and minuteness with which she imparted instruction to her 
pupils, the high moral and religious principle which controlled 
her actions, and made her life an example of truth and goodness 
to her pupils, and for her enthusiastic interest in the cause of 
education, of freedom and justice for the slave, and of philan- 
thropy and humanity towards the orphan, the prisoner, the out- 
cast, the oppressed and the poor, to whom her heart went out in 
kindly sympathies, and in prayer and effort for the improvement 
of their condition. 

During the first year of the rebellion, she left all her pleasant 
associations in New England, and came out to St. Louis, that she 

88 697 



698 

might be nearer to the scene of conflict, and aid in the work of 
the Western Sanitary Commission, and in nursing the sick and 
wounded soldiers, with whom the hospitals at St. Louis were 
crowded that year. On her arrival, she was duly commissioned 
by Mr. Yeatman, (the agent of Miss Dix for the employment of 
women nurses), and entered upon her duties in the Fifth Street 
Hospital. 

For several months, she devoted herself to this work with 
great fidelity and patience, and won the gratitude of many a poor 
sufferer by her kindness, and the respect of the surgeons, by her 
good judgment and her blended gentleness and womanly dignity. 

Late in the fall of 1862, the Western Sanitary Commission was 
moved to establish an agency at Helena, Ark., for the special re- 
lief of several hundred colored families at that military post who 
had gathered there from the neighboring country, and from the 
opposite shore in Mississippi, as a place of refuge from their rebel 
owners. It was at that time a miserable refuge, for the post was 
commanded by pro-slavery Generals, who succeeded the humane 
and excellent Major-General Curtis, who was unfortunately re- 
lieved of his command, and transferred to St. Louis, in conse- 
quence of slanders against him at Washington, which some of 
his pro-slavery subordinates had been busy in fabricating ; and 
the free papers which he gave to the colored people were violated ; 
they were subjected to all manner of cruelties and hardships; they 
were put under a forced system of labor ; driven by mounted 
orderlies to work on the fortifications, and to unload steamboats 
and coal barges ; and discharged at night without compensation, 
or a comfortable shelter. No proper record was kept of their 
services, and most of them never received any pay for months of 
incessant toil. They were compelled to camp together in the out- 
skirts of the town, in huts and condemned tents, and the rations 
issued to them were cut down to a half ration for the women and 
children ; so that they were neither well fed nor sheltered pro- 
perly from the weather, while they were entirely destitute of com- 



MARIA R. MAIs^lS-. 699 

fortable clothings and were without the means of purchasing new. 
Subjected to this treatment, very great sickness and mortality 
prevailed among them. In the miserable building assigned them 
for a hospital, which was wholly unprovided with hospital fur- 
niture and bedding, and without regular nurses or attendants, 
the} were visited once a day by a contract surgeon, who merely 
looked in upon them, administered a little medicine, and left them 
to utter neglect and misery. Here they died at a fearful rate, and 
their dead bodies were removed from the miserable pallet of straw, 
or the bare floor where they had breathed their last, and buried 
in rude coffins, and sometimes coffinless, in a low piece of ground 
near by. The proportion of deaths, was about seventy-five per- 
cent, of all w^ho were carried sick to this miserable place, so that 
the colored people became greatly afraid of being sent to the hos- 
pital, considering it the same as going to a certain death ; and 
many of them refused to go, even in the last stages of sickness, 
and died in their huts, and in and out of the very places into 
which they had crawled for concealment, neglected and alone. 

This state of things was fully known to the Generals com- 
manding, and to the medical director, and the army surgeons at 
Helena, without the least effort being made on their part towards 
their improvement or alleviation. From August, 1862, to Jan- 
uary, 1863, they continued to suffer in this manner, until the 
printed report and appeal of the chaplains at Helena for aid, 
brought some voluntary contributions of clothing, and secured 
the attention of the Western Sanitary Commission, at St. Louis, 
to the great need of help at Helena, for the "contrabands." 

It was at this juncture that the Commission proposed to Miss 
Mann to go to Helena, and act the part of the Good Samaritan to the 
colored people who had congregated there; to establish a hospital 
for the sick among them ; to supply them with clothing and other 
necessaries, and in all possible ways to improve their condition. 
The offer was readily accepted by her, and in the month of Jan- 
uary she arrived at Helena, with an ample supply of sanitary 



700 woman's work in the civil wae. 

goods and clothing, and with letters commending her to the 
protection and aid of the commanding general, and to the chap- 
lain of the post, (who now furnishes this sketch from his mem- 
ory), and to the superintendent of freedmen, who welcomed her 
as a providential messenger whom God had sent to his neglected 
and suffering poor. 

s The passage from St. Louis to Helena, a distance of six hundred 
kniles, in mid- winter, at a time when the steamers were fired on 
by guerrillas from the shore, and sometimes captured, was made 
iby Miss Mann, unattended, and without knowing wliere she 
would find a shelter when she arrived. The undertaking was 
attended with difficulty and danger, and many obstacles were to 
;be overcome, but the brave spirit of this noble woman knew no 
puch word as fail. Fortunately, the post chaplain, who had been 
detailed to a service requiring clerks, was able to receive Miss 
Mann, provide rooms for her, give her a place at the mess 
board, and render useful aid in her work. He remembers with a 
grateful interest how bravely she encountered every difficulty, and 
persevered in her humane undertaking, until almost every evil 
the colored people suffered was removed. A new hospital build- 
ing was secured, furnished, and provided with good surgeons 
and nurses, and the terrible sickness and mortality reduced to the 
minimum per-centage of the best regulated hospitals; a new and 
better camping ground was obtained, and buildings erected for 
shelter; a school for the children was established, and the women 
taught how to cut and make garments, and advised and instructed 
how to live and be useful to themselves and their families. Ma- 
terial for clothing was furnished them, which they made up for 
themselves. As the season of spring came, the able-bodied men 
were enlisted as soldiers, by a new order of the Government; 
those who were not fit for the military service were hired by the 
new lessees of the plantations, and the condition of the colored 
people was changed from one of utter misery and despair, to one 
of thrift, improvement and comparative happiness. 



MARIA E. MANN. 701 

In all these changes Miss Mann was a moving spirit, and with 
the co-operation of the chaplains, and the friendly sanction and 
aid of Major-General Prentiss — who on his arrival in February, 
1863, introduced a more humane treatment of the freed people — 
she was able to fulfil her benevolent mission, and remained till 
the month of August of that year. 

The heroism of Miss Mann during the winter season at Helena, 
was a marvel to us all. It was an exceedingly rainy winter, and 
the streets were often knee deep with mud. The town is built on 
a level, marshy region of bottom land, and for weeks the roads 
became almost impassable, and had to be waded on horseback, or 
the levee followed, and causeways had to be built by the military. 
But Miss Mann was not to be prevented by these difficulties from 
visiting the "Contraband Hospital," as it was called, and from 
going her rounds to the families of the poor colored people who 
needed her advice and assistance. I have often taken her myself 
in an open wagon with which we carried the mail bags to and 
from the steamers — having charge of the military post-office — 
and conveyed her from place to place, when the wheels would 
sink almost to the hubs, and returned with her to her quarters; 
and on several occasions when she had gone on foot when the 
side-walks were dry, and she came to a crossing that required 
deep wading, I have known her to call some stout black man to 
her aid, to carry her across, and set her down on the opposite side- 
walk. In these cases the service was rendered with true polite- 
ness and gallantry, and with the remark, " Bress the Lord, missus, 
it's no trouble to carry you troo de mud, and keep your feet dry, 
you who does so much for us black folks. You's light as a 
fedder, anyhow, and de good Lord gibs you a wonderful sight 
of strength to go 'bout dis yere muddy town, to see de poor 
culled folks, and gib medicines to the sick, and feed the hungry, 
and clothe de naked, and I bress de good Lord dat he put it into 
your heart to come to Helena.'^ 

In the autumn of 1863 Miss Mann felt that her work in Helena 



702 woman's work in the civil war. 

was accomplished, and she returned to St. Louis, the colored 
people greatly lamenting her departure. In her work there she 
not only had the co-operation and assistance of the "Western Sani- 
tary Commission, but of many benevolent ladies in IN'ew England, 
personal friends of Miss Mann and others, who, through Rev. 
Dr. Eliot of St. Louis, supplied a large portion of the funds 
that were necessary to defray the expenses of our mission. 

A new call to a theatre of usefulness in Washington City, in 
the District of Columbia, now came to Miss Mann, to become the 
teacher of a colored orphan asylum, which she accepted, where 
she devoted her energies to the welfare of the children of tliose 
who in the army, or in some other service to their country and 
race have laid down their lives, and left their helpless ofFs})ring 
to be cared for by Him, who hears even the young ravens when 
they cry, and moves human hearts to fulfil the ministry of his 
love; and who by his Spirit is moving the American people to 
do justly to the freed people of this land, and to make reparation 
for the oppression and wrong they have endured for so many 
generations. 

After rendering a useful and excellent service as a teacher in 
the Colored Orphan Asylum at Washington, she was induced by 
the colored people, who greatly appreciated her work for their 
children, to establish an independent school in Georgetown. 
Friends at the North purchased a portable building for a school- 
house; the Freedmen's Bureau offered her a lot of ground to put 
it on, but not being in the right locality she rented one, and the 
building was sent to her, and has been beautifully fitted up for 
the purpose. The school has been successfully established, and 
under her excellent management, teaching, and discipline, it has 
become a model school. Intelligent persons visiting it are im- 
pressed by the perfect order maintained, and the advancement of 
the scholars in knowledge and good behaviour. 

Miss Mann has made many personal sacrifices in establishing 
and carrying forward this school without government patronage 



MARIA R. MANN. 703 

or support, and the only fear concerning it is that the colored 
people will not be able from their limited resources to sustain it. 
It is her wish to prepare her scholars to become teachers of other 
colored schools, a work she is amply and remarkably qualified to 
do, and one in which she would be sustained by philanthropic 
aid, if the facts were known to those who feel the importance of 
all such efforts for the education and improvement of the colored 
people of this country, in the new position upon which they have 
entered as free citizens of the republic. 

Among the gratifying results which Miss Mann has found in ^ 
this work of instruction among the colored people are the rapid 
improvement she has witnessed among them, the capacity and 
eagerness with which they pursue the acquisition of knowledge, 
the gratitude they have evinced to her, and the consciousness that 
she has contributed to their welfare and happiness. 

As a noble, self-sacrificing woman, devoted to the service of 
her fellow-beings, and endowed with the best attributes of human 
nature. Miss Mann deserves the title of a Christian philanthropist, 
and her life and labors will be remembered with gratitude, and 
the blessing of him that was ready to perish, and of those who 
had no helper, will follow her all the remainder of her days. 



SARAH J. HAGAR. 



^ ^%?f 



T is due to the memory of this noble young woman that 
she should be included in the record of those sainted 
heroines who fearlessly went into the midst of danger 
and death that they might minister to the poor and 
suffering freedmen, whom our victorious arms had emancipated 
from their rebel masters, and yet had left for a time without 
means or opportunity to fit themselves for the new life that 
opened before them. To this humane service she freely devoted 
herself and became a victim to the climate of the lower Missis- 
sippi, while engaged in the arduous work of ministering to the 
physical wants and the education of the freed people, who in the 
winter and spring of 1864, had gathered in camps around Vicks- 
burg, and along the Louisiana shore. 

Miss Hagar was the eldest daughter of Mrs. C. C. Hagar, who 
also was one of the army of heroic nurses who served in the hos- 
pitals of St. liouis during the greater part of the war. For many 
months they had served together in the same hospital, and by 
their faithfulness and careful ministrations to the sick and 
wounded soldier had won the highest confidence of the Western 
Sanitary Commission, by whose President they were appointed. 

During the fall of 1863 the National Free^men's Aid Com- 
mission of New York, under the presidency of Hon. Francis G. 
Shaw, sent two agents, Messrs. William L. Marsh and H. R. 
Foster, to Vicksburg, to establish an agency there, and at Natchez, 
for the aid of the freed people, in furnishing supplies of food and 

704 



SARAH J. HAGAR. 705 

clothing to the destitute^ and establishing schools for the children 
of the freedmen, and for such adults as could attend, and to help 
them in all possible ways to enter upon the new and better civi- 
lization that awaited them. In this work the Western Sanitary 
Commission co-operated, and Messrs. Marsh and Foster wrote to 
the writer of this sketch, then acting as Secretary of the above 
Commission, to send them several teachers and assistants in their 
work. Among those who volunteered for the service was Miss 
Hagar, who was wanted in another situation in St. Louis, but 
preferred this more arduous work for the freedmen. 

The reasons she gave for her choice were, that she was well and 
strong, and felt a real interest in the welfare of the freed people ; 
that she had no prejudices against them, and that while there were 
enough who were willing to fill the office of nurse to the white 
soldiers, it was more difficult to get those who would render equal 
kindness and justice to the black troops, and to the freed people, 
and therefore she felt it her duty and pleasure to go. She was 
accordingly commissioned, and with Miss A. M. Knight, of Sun 
Prairie, Wisconsin, (another worthy laborer in the same cause) 
went down the river to Vicksburg, in the winter of 1864. 

For several months she labored there with untiring devotion 
to the interests and welfare of the colored people, under the di- 
rection of Messrs. Marsh and Foster. No task was too difficult 
for her to undertake that promised good results, and in danger of 
all kinds, whether from disease, or from the assaults of the enemy, 
she never lost her presence of mind, nor was wanting in the re- 
quisite courage for that emergency. In person she was above the 
medium height, and had a face beaming with kindness, and pleas- 
ant to look upon. Her mind had received a good degree of cul- 
ture, and her natural intelligence was of a high order. And 
better than all within her earthly form dwelt a noble and heroic 
soul. 

Late in April of that year, she had an attack of malarial fever, 
whicli prostrated her very suddenly, and just in the proportion 

89 



706 

that she had been strong and apparently well fortified against 
disease, it took a deep hold of her vital powers, and on the 3d 
of May, she yielded to the fell destroyer, and breathed no more. 

The following tribute to her character, is taken from the letter 
of Mr. Marsh, in which he communicated the sad tidings of her 
death. 

" In her death the National Freedmen's Aid Association, has 
lost a most earnest, devoted, Christian laborer. She entered upon 
her duties at a time of great suffering and destitution among the 
Freedmen at Vicksburg, and when we were much in need of aid. 
The fidelity with which she performed her labors, and the deep 
interest she manifested in them soon endeared her to us all. We 
shall miss her sorely ; but the noble example she has left us will 
encourage us to greater efforts, and more patient toil. She seemed 
also to realize the magnitude and importance of this work upon 
which she had entered, and the need of Divine assistance in its 
performance. She seemed also to realize what sacrifice might be 
demanded of one engaged in a work like this, and the summons, 
although sudden, did not find her unprepared to meet it. She 
has done a noble work, and done it well. 

"The sacrifice she made is the greatest one that can be made for 
any cause, the sacrifice of life. ^ Greater love than this hath no 
man, that a man lay down his life for his friends.^ She has gone 
to receive her reward.^^ 

Her remains were brought to her native town in Illinois, and 
deposited there, where the blessed memory she has left among her 
friends and kindred, is cherished with heartfelt reverence and 
affection. 



MRS. JOSEPHINE R. GRIFFIN. 




F the most thoroughly unselfish devotion of an earnest 
and gifted woman to the interests and welfare of 
a despised and down-trodden race, to the manifest 
injury and detriment of her own comfort, ease, or 
pecuniary prospects, and without any hope or desire of reward 
other than the consciousness of having been their benefactor, con- 
stitutes a woman a heroine, then is Mrs. Griffin one of the most 
remarkable heroines of our times. 

Of her early history we know little. She was a woman of 
refinement and culture, has always been remarkable for her 
energy and resolution, as well as for her philanthropic zeal for 
the poor and oppressed. The beginning of the war found her a 
widow, with, we believe, three children, all daughters, in Wash- 
ington, D. C. Of these daughters, the eldest has a position in 
the Treasury Department, a second has for some time assisted her 
mother in her labors, and the youngest is in school. Mrs. Grif- 
fin was too benevolent ever to be rich, and when the freedmen 
and their families began to concentrate in the District of Colum- 
bia, and on Arlington Heights, across the Potomac, she sought 
them out, and made the effort to ameliorate their condition. At 
that time they hardly knew whether they were to be permanently 
free or not, and massed together as they Avere, their old slave 
habits of recklessness, disorder, and over-crowding soon gained 
the predominance, and showed their evil effect in producing a 

fearful amount of sickness and death. They were not, with 

707 



708 

comparatively few exceptions, indolent; but they had naturally 
lapsed into the easy, slovenly methods, or rather want of method 
of the old slave life, and a few were doing the greater part of 
what was done. They were mere children in capacity, will and 
perseverance. Mrs. Griffin, with her intensely energetic nature, 
soon effected a change. Order took the place of disorder, under 
her direction; new cabins were built, neatness and system main- 
tained, till their good effects were so apparent, that the freedmen 
voluntarily pursued the course advised by their teacher and 
friend; all who were able to do any work were provided as far as 
possible with employment, and schools for the children in the 
day time, and for adults in the evening, were established. In 
this good work she received material assistance from that devoted 
young Christian now gone to his rest, the late Cornelius M. 
Welles. After awhile, the able-bodied men were enlisted in the 
army, and the stronger and healthier women provided with situ- 
ations in many instances at the North, and the children, and 
feeble, decrepit men and women, could not perform work enough 
for their maintenance. Mrs. Griffin began to solicit aid for them, 
and carried them through one winter by the assistance she was able 
to collect, and by what she gave from her own not over-full purse. 
Some land was now allotted to them, and by the utmost diligence 
they were enabled to provide almost entirely for themselves, till 
autumn; but meantime the Act of Emancipation in the District 
of Columbia had drawn thither some thousands of people of 
color from the adjacent states of Maryland and Virginia. All 
looked up to Mrs. Griffin as their special Providence. She was 
satisfied that it was better for them, as far as possible, to find 
places and work in the Northern States, than to remain there, 
where employment was precarious, and where the excessive 
number of workers had reduced the wages of such as could find 
employment. She accordingly commenced an extensive corre- 
spondence, to obtain from persons at the North in want of ser- 
vants, orders for such as could be supplied from the colored 



/ 

MRS. JOSEPHINE R. GRIFFIN-. 709 

people residing in the District of Columbia. Having completely 
systematized the matter, she has been in the habit, for nearly two 
years past, of leaving Washington once or twice a week, with a 
company of colored persons, for whom she had obtained situations 
in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Pittsburg, Cincinnati, or 
smaller cities, paying their fare, providing them with food on the 
journey, and at its termination until she could put them into the 
families who had engaged them, and then returning to make up 
another company. The cost of these expeditions she has provided 
almost entirely from her own means, her daughters who have im- 
bibed their mother's spirit, helping as far as possible in this noble 
work. In the autumn of 1865 she found that notwithstanding^ 
all for whom she could provide situations, there were likely to be 
not less than twenty thousand colored persons, freedmen and 
their families, in a state of complete destitution before the 1st of 
December, and she published in the Washington and other 
papers, an appeal to the benevolent to help. The Freedmen's 
Bureau at first denied the truth of her statements, but further 
investigation convinced them that she was right, and they were 
wrong, and Congress was importuned for an appropriation for 
their necessities. Twenty-five thousand dollars were appropriated, 
and its distribution left to the Freedmen's Bureau. It would 
have been more wisely distributed had it been entrusted to Mrs. 
Griffin, as she was more thoroughly cognizant of the condition 
and real wants of the people than the Bureau could be. Mrs. 
Griffin has pursued her work of providing situations for the 
freedmen, and watching over their interests to the present time; 
and so long as life and health lasts, she is not likely to give it up. 



MRS. M. M. HALLOWELL. 




HE condition of the loyal whites of East Tennessee 
and Northern Alabama and Georgia, deservedly ex- 
cited the sympathy and liberality of the loyal North. 
No portion of the people of the United States had 
proved their devotion to the Union by more signal sacrificeSj 
more patient endurance, or more terrible sufferings. The men 
for the mere avowal of their attachment to the Union flag and 
the Constitution were hunted like deer, and if caught, murdered 
in cold blood. Most of them managed, though with great peril, 
to escape to the Union army, where they became valuable sol- 
diers, and by their thorough knowledge of the country and their 
skill in wood -craft rendered important service as scouts and pio- 
neers. Whenever they escaped the Rebels visited them, their 
houses were plundered, their cattle and other live stock seized, 
and if the house was in a Rebel neighborhood or in a secluded 
situation, it was burned and the wife and children driven out 
penniless, and often maltreated, outraged or murdered. If they 
escaped with their lives they were obliged to hide in the caves or 
woods by day, and travel often hundreds of miles by night, to 
reach the Union lines. They came in, wearied, footsore, in rags, 
and often sick and nearly dead from starvation. When they 
reached Nashville, or Knoxville after it came into our possession, 
they were in need of all things; shelter, food, clothing, medicine 
and care. A few of them were well educated; the majority were 
illiterate so far as book knowledge was concerned, but intelligent 

710 



MRS. M. M. HALLOWELL. 711 

and thoughtful on the subject of loyalty and the war; not a few 
were almost reduced to a state of fatuity by their suiFerings, and 
seemed to have lost all distinct consciousness of what was occur- 
ring around them. Nashville and Knoxville a little later, Mem- 
phis, Cairo, St. Louis, and Louisville swarmed with these poor 
loyal people, and efforts were made in each city to aid them. In 
the Northern cities large contributions of money and clothing 
were made for their relief. In Boston, Edward Everett, ever 
ready to aid the suffering, gave the great influence of his name, 
as well as his personal efforts, (almost the last act of his well-spent 
life) in raising a liberal fund for their help. In New York, 
Brooklyn and other cities, efforts were made which resulted in 
large contributions. In Philadelphia, Mrs. M. M. Hallowell, a 
lady of high position and great energy, appealed to the public for 
aid for these unfortunate people, and Governor Curtin and many 
other State and National official personages, gave their influence 
and contributions to the work. A large amount of money and 
stores having been collected, Mrs. Hallowell and a committee of 
ladies from Philadelphia visited Nashville, Knoxville, Chatta- 
nooga and Huntsville to distribute their stores in person. The 
journey undertaken early in May, 1864, was not unattended with 
danger; for, though General Sherman had commenced his great 
march toward Atlanta, Forrest, Morgan and Wheeler were ex- 
erting themselves to cut his communications and break up his 
connection with his base. Along some portions of the route the 
guerrillas swarmed, and more than once the cars were delayed by 
reports of trouble ahead. The courageous ladies, however, pushed 
forward and received from the generals in command the most 
hearty welcome, and all the facilities they required for their mis- 
sion. They found that the suffering of the loyal refugees had not 
been exaggerated; that in many cases their misery was beyond 
description, and that from hunger, cold, nakedness, the want of 
suitable shelter, and the prevalence of malignant typhoid fever, 
measles, scarlet fever and the other diseases which usually prevail 



712 

among the wretched and starving poor, verj many had died, and 
others could not long survive. They distributed their stores 
freely yet judiciously, arranged to aid a home and farm for Refu- 
gees and Orphans which had been established near Nashville, and 
to render future assistance to those in need at Knoxville, Chatta- 
nooga, &c., and returned to Philadelphia. Mrs. Hallowell vis- 
ited them again in the autumn, and continued her labors for them 
till after the close of the war. The Home for Refugees and 
Orphans near Nashville, formed a part of the battle ground in 
the siege and battles of Nashville in December, 1864, and was 
completely ruined for the time. Some new buildings of a tem- 
porary character were subsequently erected, but the close of the 
war soon rendered its further occupation unnecessary. 

Mrs. HallowelPs earnest and continued labors for the refugees 
drew forth from the loyal men and women of East Tennessee 
letters full of gratitude and expressive of the great benefits she 
had conferred on them. Colonel N. G. Taylor, representative in 
Congress from East Tennessee, and one of the most eloquent 
speakers and writers in the West, among others, addressed her an 
interesting and touching letter of thanks for what she had done 
for his persecuted and tried constituents, from which we quote a 
single paragraph. 

^^ Accept, my dear madam, for yourself and those associated 
with you, the warmest thanks of their representative, for the 
noble efforts you have been and are making for the relief of my 
poor, afflicted, starving people. Most of the men of East Ten- 
nessee are bleeding at the front for our country (this letter was 
written before the close of the war) whilst their wives and little 
ones are dying of starvation at home. They are worthy of your 
sympathy and your labor, for they have laid all their substance 
upon the altar of our country and have sacrificed everything they 
had for their patriotism.'^ 



OTHER FRIENDS OF THE FREED- 
MEN AND REFUGEES. 




N many of the preceding sketches we have had occasion 
to notice the labors of ladies who had been most dis- 
tinguished in other departments of the great Army 
work, in behalf of the Freedmen, or the Refugees. 
Mrs. Harris devoted in all five or six months to their care at 
Nashville and its vicinity. Miss Tyson and Mrs. Beck gave 
their valuable services to their relief. Miss Jane Stuart Woolsey 
was, and we believe still is laboring in behalf of the Freedmen 
in Richmond or its vicinity. Mrs. Governor Hawley of Con- 
necticut was among the first to instruct them at Fernandina and 
Hilton Head. Miss Gilson devoted nearly the whole of the last 
year of her service in the army to the freedmen and the hospital 
for colored soldiers. In the West, Mrs. Lucy E. Starr, while 
Matron of the Soldiers' Home at Memphis, bestowed a large 
amount of labor on the Refugees who were congregated in great 
numbers in that city. Mrs. Clinton B. Fisk, the wife of the gal- 
lant Christian, General Fisk, exerted herself to collect clothing, 
money and supplies for the Refugees, black and white, at Pilot 
Knob, Missouri, and distributed it to them in person. Mrs. H. 
F. Hoes and Miss Alice F. Royce of Wisconsin, were very active 
in instructing and aiding the children of Refugees at Rolla, Mis- 
souri, in 1864 and 1865. Mrs. John S. Phelps established with 
the aid of a few other ladies a school for the children of Refugees 

90 713 



714 woman's work ijs^ the civil war. 

at Springfield, Missouri, and Mrs. Mary A. Whitaker, an excellent 
and efficient teacher, had charge of it for two years. 

At Leavenworth and Fort Scott, large and well conducted 
schools for the children of Refugees and Freedmen were estab- 
lished, and several teachers employed, one of them, Mrs. Nettie 
C. Constant, at Leavenworth, winning a very high reputation for 
her faithfulness and skill as a teacher. 

The Western Sanitary Commission, the National Freedmen's 
Relief Association, Relief Societies in Cincinnati, Chicago, St. 
Louis and elsewhere, and later the American Union Commission, 
were all engaged in labor for either the Freedmen or the Refu- 
gees or both. 

All these organizations employed or supported teachers, and all 
worked in remarkable harmony. At Vicksburg the Western 
Sanitary Commission sent, in the spring of 1864, Miss G. D. 
Chapman of Exeter, Maine, to take charge of a school for the 
children of Refugees, of whom there were large numbers there. 
Miss Chapman served very faithfully for some months, and then 
was compelled by her failing health, to return home. The Com- 
mission then appointed Miss Sarah E. M. Lovejoy, daughter of 
Hon. Owen Lovejoy, to take charge of the school. It soon be- 
came one of the largest in the South, and was conducted with 
great ability by Miss Lovejoy till the close of the War. 

The National Freedmen's Relief Association had, at the same 
time, a school for Freedmen and the children of Freedmen there, 
and Miss Mary E. Sheffield, a most faithful and accomplished 
teacher from Norwich, Connecticut, was in charge of it. The 
climate, the Rebel prejudices and the indifference or covert oppo- 
sition to the school of those from whom better things might have 
been expected, made the position one of great difficulty and re- 
sponsibility ; but Miss Sheffield was fully equal to the work, and 
continued in it with great usefulness until late in May, 1865, 
Avhen finding herself seriously ill she attempted to return North, 
but on reaching Memphis was too ill to proceed farther, and 



OTHER FRIENDS OF THE FREEDMEN AND REFUGEES. 715 

died there on the 5th of June, 1865, a martyr to her faithful- 
ness and zeal. 

In Helena, a Refugee Home was established by the Western 
Sanitary Commission, and Mrs. Sarah Coombs, a benevolent and 
excellent lady of that town, placed in charge of it. At Nash- 
ville, Tennessee, the Nashville Refugee Relief Society, under 
the management of Mrs. Mary R. Fogg, established a Refugees^ 
Home which was aided by the Western Sanitary Commission, the 
Philadelphia ladies, and other associations. At Little Rock, 
Arkansas, was another Home which did good service. But the 
most extensive institution of this description, was the Refugee 
and Freedmen's Home at St. Louis, occupying the Lawson Hos- 
pital in that city, and established by the Western Sanitary Com- 
mission with the co-operation of the Ladies' Union Aid Society, 
and the Ladies' Freedmen's Relief Association. Mrs. H. M. 
Weed was its efficient matron, and was supported by a sif,ff of 
six or seven assistants and teachers. Over three thousand Refu- 
gees were received and aided here in the six months from February 
to July, 1865, and both children and adults were taught not only 
elementary studies but housework, cooking and laundry work; 
the women were paid moderate wages with which to clothe them- 
selves and their children, and were taught some of the first les- 
sons of a better civilization. In the superintendence of this good 
work, Mrs. Alfred Clapp, the President of the Ladies' Union 
Aid Society, Mrs. Joseph Crawshaw, an active member of that 
Society, Mrs. Lucien Eaton, the President of the Ladies' Freed- 
men's Association, and Mrs. N. Stevens, one of the managers of 
that Society, were assiduous and faithful. 

There were great numbers of other ladies equally efficient in 
the Freedmen's Schools and Homes in the Atlantic States, but 
their work was mainly under the direction of the Freedmen's 
Relief, and subsequently of the American Union Commission, 
and it is not easy to obtain from them accounts of the labors of 
particular individuals. The record of the women who have la- 



716 

bored faithfully, and not a few of them to the loss of thtir health 
or lives in work which was in some respects even more repulsive 
to the natural sensibilities than that in the hospitals, if smaller 
in numbers, is not less honorable than that of their sisters in the 
hospitals. 



PART V. 



LADIES DISTINGUISHED FOR SERVICES IN SOLDIERS' HOMES, VOL- 
UNTEER REFRESHMENT SALOONS, ON GOVERNMENT 
HOSPITAL TRANSPORTS, ETC. 



MRS. O. E. HOSMER. 




T the opening of the late war, the subject of this sketch, 
Mrs. O. E. Hosmer, was residing with her family in 
Chicago, Illinois. Hers was by no means a vague pa- 
triotism that contented itself with verbal expressions 
of sympathy for her country's cause and defenders. She believed 
that she had sacrifices to make, and work to do, and could hope 
for no enjoyment, or even comfort, amidst the luxuries of home, 
while thousands to whom these things were as dear as to herself, 
had resolutely turned away from them, willing to perish them- 
selves, if the national life might be preserved. 

Her first sacrifice was that of two of her sons, whom she gave 
to the service of the country in the army. Then, to use her own 
words, "feeling a burning desire to aid personally in the work, I 
did not wait to hear of sufferings I have since so often witnessed, 
but determined, as God had given me health and a good husband 
to provide for me, to go forth as a volunteer and do whatever my 
hands found to do.'' Few perhaps will ever know to the full 
extent, how much the soldier benefited by this resolve. 

To such a spirit, waiting and ardent, opportunities were not 
Jong in presenting themselves. Mrs. Hosmer's first experiences, 
away from home, were at Tipton, and Smithtown, Missouri. This 
was early in the winter of 1862, only a few months after the 
commencement of the War ; but as all will remember there had 
already been desperate campaigns, and hard fighting in Missouri, 

719 



720 woman's work in the civil wae. 

and there were the usual consequences, devastation, want and suf- 
fering to be met on all sides. 

At this time the effects of that beneficent and excellent institu- 
tion, the Northwestern Sanitary Commission, had not been felt 
at all points where need existed; for the field was vast, and even 
with the wonderful charities of the great Northwest, pouring 
into its treasury and store-houses, with a powerful organization, 
and scores of willing hands and brains at command, time was 
necessary to enable it to assume that sort of omnipresence which 
afterward caused it to be found in all places where battles were 
fought, or hospitals erected, or men suffered from the casualties 
of war, throughout that great territory. 

Mrs. Hosmer found the hospitals at Tipton and Smithtown in 
the worst possible condition, and the men suffering for almost 
everything required for their comfort. This, under the circum- 
stances, caused no surprise, for medical stores were not readily 
available at points so remote. But Mrs. Hosmer had the pleas- 
ure of causing a large box of Sanitary stores and comforts to be 
sent them by the kind and efficient agent at St. Louis, which she 
helped to distribute. She was thus enabled to leave them in a 
much more comfortable condition. 

On her return to Chicago, a number of influential ladies resid- 
ing there, formed an association to which the name of the '^ Ladies' 
War Committee " was given. Mrs. Hosmer was appointed secre- 
tary of this organization. 

This association was very useful and efficient, and met daily to 
work for the soldiers, particularly in making up garments for the 
Regiments sent out by the Board of Trade of Chicago. 

When these, the Eighty-eighth and Seventy-second Illinois 
Regiments, and the Board of Trade Battery, participated in 
any battle, they volunteered to go and look after the wounded. 
The first volunteers were sent out upon this charitable mission 
after the battle of Stone River, about the 1st of January, 1863, 
when two ladies, Mrs. Hosmer and Mrs. Smith Tinkham pro- 



MES. O. E. HOSMER. 721 

ceeded to MurfreesborOj Tennessee, with a large quantity of sup- 
plies. They remained there, in constant and unwearied attend- 
ance upon the large number of wounded from this important 
battle, for nine or ten weeks. 

The writer of this sketch was at that time in Chicago, and 
well remembers the return of these ladies from this errand of 
mercy, and the simple pathos of the report they then made, to 
the Board of Trade, of their work and their stewardship of the 
funds entrusted to them by that body for the expenses of the ex- 
pedition, and the use of the wounded. 

As these ladies were the first volunteers upon the ground, they 
were warmly welcomed by the medical director and surgeons, 
and their services at once rendered available both in the prepa- 
ration of delicacies for the sufferers, and in personal attendance 
upon them. Here Mrs. Hosmer met Avith a most singular and 
touching incident. A soldier who had been wounded in the leg, 
and taken prisoner, had his leg amputated by a Rebel surgeon. 
He was afterwards recaptured, and being found in a dreadful 
and dangerous condition, had to suifer a second amputation. It 
was only by the closest and best of care that there remained a 
possibility that his life might be saved; and this the surgeon in 
charge requested of Mrs. Hosmer. 

On approaching his bed, Mrs. Hosmer was almost painfully 
struck by his strong resemblance to one of her sons, while he 
was at the same instant, bewildered and excited by discovering in 
her an equally strong likeness to the mother he was never to see 
again. 

It need hardly be said that this accidental likeness caused a 
strong bond of feeling between those till that moment utter 
strangers. The soldier begged to be allowed to call the lady 
mother, and she was only too glad to minister to him as she 
hoped some kind soul might do to the son he resembled, should 
an hour of need occur. She found him to be an educated and 
intelligent young man. She did for him all she could, and 

91 



722 woman's work in tpie civil wae. 

watched and tended him with real devotion^ but in vain. It 
was found impossible to save him ; and when he was gone, she 
performed the last of her sad offices, by cutting from above his 
brow a mass of clustering, raven curls, which she enclosed in a 
letter to his mother, telling her all she knew of her boy's 
bravery, and his fate. 

These days at Murfreesboro were days of hard labor, but of 
great satisfaction. There had been more than five thousand men 
in hospital, but these were thinned out by deaths, convalescence, 
etc., until but few remained. Then Mrs. Hosmer and her friend 
returned to their home. 

The following summer that admirable and most useful insti- 
tution, the "Soldiers' Home," was established in Chicago, and 
Mrs. Hosmer was appointed first vice-president. 

This "Home" occupied much of her time for the following 
year. In connection with this was the Soldiers' Rest, where 
hundreds, and sometimes thousands of men, in transitu, were 
furnished with good warm meals, and with lodging for the sick, 
to the extent of its accommodations. This was entirely sustained 
and carried on by the ladies of Chicago, and Mrs. Hosmer often 
passed entire days and nights there, in these labors of love. 

After the battle of Chickamauga she again felt it a duty and 
privilege to proceed to the field, on a mission of mercy. Her 
friend, Mrs. Tinkham, again accompanied her. As they neared 
Chattanooga, they were unfortunately taken prisoners. They 
suffered much fatigue, and many privations, but no other ill- 
treatment, though they were, a part of the time, in great danger 
from the shells which were exploding all about them. They 
were however soon recaptured, and proceeded on their way. 

Having lost their supplies, however, they found they could be 
of little service. Provisions were very scarce, as in fact were all 
necessaries, both for the wounded and well. Therefore, being 
provided with an escort, they slowly retraced their way, and, 
after a disastrous and fatiguing journey, arrived in Chicago, com- 



MRS. O. E. HOSMER. 723 

pletely worn and exhausted, and without the cheering influence 
of the consciousness of having accomplished much good by their 
efforts. 

From this time, with the exception of occasional trips to Cairo, 
to look after the sick and wounded there, Mrs. Hosmer remained 
in Chicago, laboring for the soldiers at the "Home" and '^Rest," 
until the close of the year, 1864. The "Northwestern Sanitary 
and Soldiers' Home Fair,'' ivas then in contemplation, and was 
to take place in June, 1865. Mrs. Hosmer had been appointed 
one of the Executive Committee, and Corresponding Secretary of 
the organization, which had the mammoth fair in charge. 

In pursuance of the objects in view, she then went down the 
Mississippi River, to solicit donations of money and articles for 
the fair. Thinking she could materially aid the object, by visit- 
ing hospitals, and giving her testimony that supplies were still 
needed, she paid particular attention to this part of her duty, and 
visited nearly every hospital from Cairo to New Orleans. She 
had the satisfaction of raising about five thousand dollars in 
money for the fair, besides obtaining a variety and large amount 
of valuable articles for sale. She also had the pleasure of caus- 
ing supplies to be sent, at that time, to points where they were 
much needed. 

She was at Vicksburg when five thousand emaciated wrecks 
of manhood from the prisons of Andersonville and Catawba, 
were brought thither to be exchanged, and often visited their 
camp and aided in distributing the supplies so greatly needed. 

Many a time her kind heart was bursting with pain and sym- 
pathy for these suffering men, many of whom had been tortured 
and starved till already beyond the reach of help. But she was 
to see still greater horrors, when, as the culmination of their fate, 
the steamer Sultana, on which their homeward passage was taken, 
exploded, and, she, being near, beheld hundreds who had escaped 
the sufferings of the prison pens, drawn from the water, dying or 



724 woman's work in the cia^l war. 

dead, drowned or scalded, in tliat awful accident. As she says, 
herself, her heart was nearly broken by this dreadful sight. 

Mrs. Hosmer returned to Chicago, and did not cease her labors 
until the Soldiers' Rest was closed, and the war ended. For 
about four years she gave untiring devotion to the cause, and few 
have accomplished more real, earnest and persistent service. 
Since the close of the war, Mrs. Hosmer has become a resident 
of New York, though she is, at this present writing, established 
at St. Paul, Minnesota, in charge of a sick son, who seeks the 
recovery of his health in that bracing climate. 



MISS HATTIE WISWALL 




ISS HATTIE WISWALL entered the service as 
Hospital Nurse, May 1, 1863, For the first five or 
six months she was employed in the Benton Barracks 
Hospital at St. Louis. At that time the suffering of 
our boys in Missouri was very great, and all through that sum- 
mer the hospitals of St. Louis were crowded to overflowing. 
From one thousand to fifteen hundred were lying in Benton Bar- 
racks alone. Men, wounded in every conceivable manner, were 
frequently arriving from the battle-fields, and our friend went 
through the same experience to which so many brave women, 
fresh from the quiet and happy scenes of their peaceful homes, 
have been willing to subject themselves for the sake of humanity. 
Sensitive and delicate though she was, she acquired here, by con- 
stant attention to her duties, a coolness in the presence of appal- 
ling sights that we have rarely seen equaled even in the stronger 
sex, and which, when united with a tender sympathy, as in her 
case, makes the model nurse. The feeling of horror which 
shrinks from the sight of agony and vents itself in vapid excla- 
mations, she rightly deemed had no place in the character of one 
who proposes to do anything. So putting this aside she learned 
to be happy in the hospital, and consequently made others happy. 
Never in our observation has this first condition of success in 
nursing been so completely met. It became so intense a satisfac- 
tion to her to lessen, in ever so slight a degree, the misery of a 
sick or wounded soldier that the horror of the case seemed never 

725 



726 woman's work in the civil war. 

to occur to her. It was often remarked that " Miss Hattie was 
never quite so happy as when administering medicine or dressing 
a wound.'^ 

From Benton Barracks she was ordered in the autumn of 1863 
to Nashville, Tennessee, where she remained a short time and 
was then ordered to Yicksburg, Mississippi, to assist in conducting 
a Soldiers' Home. Here she remained until the close of the war. 
How faithfully she discharged her duties, first as assistant and 
then as principal Matron, the one hundred and fifteen thousand 
guests who were entertained there during her stay know, and the 
living can testify. Her position for much of the time was an 
extremely responsible and laborious one, the capacities of the 
Home being sometimes extended to the accommodation of six 
hundred men, and averaging, for nearly the whole period of her 
stay, two hundred daily. The multiplicity of duties in the charge 
of the household affairs of such an institution, with the uncer- 
tain assistance to be found in such a place, may be better imag- 
ined than told. Under her satisfactory management the Vicks- 
burg Home acquired an enviable reputation, and was the favorite 
stopping-place on the river. The great difficulty in conducting a 
Soldiers' Home in time of war, as every one knows who has been 
connected with one, is to keep it neat and clean, to have the floors, 
the tables, the beds sufficiently respectable to remind the soldier 
of the home he has left. Nothing but ceaseless vigilance could 
do this at Vicksburg, as men were constantly arriving from filthy 
camps, and still filthier prisons, covered not with greenbacks but 
with what was known there as the rebel "currency.'' But on 
any one of the hundreds of beds that filled the dormitories of 
this Home our most fastidious reader could have slept in peace 
and safety; and, but for the fact that the bill of fare Tvas mostly 
limited to the army ration, could have set down at any of the 
tables and enjoyed a meal. 

The good work of Miss Wiswall in Vicksburg was not con- 
fined to the Soldiers' Home. She did not forget the freedmen, 



MISS HATTIE WISWALL. 727 

but was true to tlie teachings of her uncles, the great and good 
Lovejoys. Of the sufferings of these poor people she had oppor- 
tunity to see much, and often did her sympathies lead her beyond 
the sphere of her ordinary duties, to carry food and clothing and 
medicine to such as were ready to perish. 

In these charities, which were extended also to the white refu- 
gees. Miss Wiswall did not lose sight of the direct line of her 
duty, the work she had set out to do. The needs of the loyal 
soldier took precedence in her mind of all others. No service so 
delighted her as this, and to none was she so well fitted. 

We remember after the calamitous Red River expedition, boat- 
load after boat-load of the wounded were sent up to Vicksburg. 
As soon as they touched the shore, our friend and her compan- 
ions met the poor fellows stretched upon the decks and scattered 
through the cabins and around the engines, with words of wo- 
manly cheer, and brought the delicacies and refreshments pre- 
pared by thoughtful hands at home. Many a brave man will 
remember to his dying day how he shed tears of joy at sight of 
the first true ISTorthern woman's face that met him after that toil- 
some, disastrous march. 

At length a boat-load of the severely wounded were about to 
be sent up the river to Northern hospitals, or on furlough to go 
to their homes. The surgeon in charge desired the aid of a com- 
petent lady assistant; and Miss Wiswall obtained temporary 
leave of absence to accompany him and help take care of the suf- 
ferers. Her influence, we were told, was inspiriting to all on 
board. She was once more in hospital and entirely at home. At 
Cairo, Avhere a portion of the wounded were discharged, she took 
charge of an officer, whose limb had been amputated, and saw 
him safely to his home in Elgin, Illinois. Making her friends 
in Chicago a brief visit, she returned to her duties at Vicksburg, 
where she remained until, with the close of the war, the Soldiers^ 
Home was discontinued about the 1st of June, 1865. 



MRS. LUCY E. STARR. 



1 


1 



N an early period of the civil Avar this heroic woman 
left her home at Griggsville, Illinois, came to St. Louis 
and offered her services to the Western Sanitary Com- 
mission as a nurse in the hospitals. She was already 
known as a person of excellent Christian character, of education 
and refinement, of real practical ability, the widow of a deceased 
clergyman, and full of the spirit of kindness and patriotic sym- 
pathy towards our brave soldiers in the field. Her services were 
gladly accepted, and she entered at once upon her duties as a 
nurse in the Fifth Street Hospital at St. Louis, which was in 
charge of the excellent Dr. John T. Hodgen, an eminent surgeon 
of that city. 

For nearly two years Mrs. Starr served as nurse in this hospi- 
tal, having charge of one of the special diet kitchens, and minis- 
tering wdth her own hands to the sick and wounded inmates. In 
these services the great kindness of her manners, the cheerful and 
hopeful spirit that animated her, the words of sympathy and en- 
couragement she gave her patients, and the efficiency and excel- 
lence of everything she did won for her a large measure of esteem 
and confidence, and made her a favorite nurse with the authori- 
ties of the hospital, and with the sick and wounded, who received 
her ministrations and care. Small in stature, it was wonderful 
how much labor she was able to accomplish, and how she was 
sustained by a soul full of noble purposes and undoubting faith. 
In the autumn of 1863 Mrs. Starr was needed by the Western 
728 



MRS. LUCY E. STARR. 729 

Sanitary Commission to take the position of Matron of the Sol- 
diers' Home at Memphis^ to have charge of the domestic arrange- 
ments of the institution, and to extend a true hospitality to the 
many invalid soldiers going on furlough to their homes or return- 
ing to the hospitals, or to their regiments, passing through Mem- 
phis on their way. The number thus entertained sometimes 
reached as high as three' hundred and fifty in one day. The av- 
erage daily number for two years and a half was one hundred and 
six. When the Home was first opened, and before it was much 
known, the first guests were brought in by Mrs. Governor Har- 
vey, of Wisconsin, who found them wandering in the streets, 
sadly in need of a kind friend to give them assistance and care. 
Sometimes the Superintendent, Mr. O. E. Waters, would have 
from twenty to thirty discharged, furloughed and invalid soldiers 
to aid, in collecting their pay, procuring transportation, many of 
whom he found lying on the hard pavements in the streets and 
on the bluff near the steamboat landing, in a helpless condition, 
with no friend to assist them. The object of the Soldiers' Home 
was to take care of such, give them food and lodging without 
charge, make them welcome while they stayed, and send them 
rejoicing on their way. 

In the internal management of this institution, and in the kind 
hospitality extended to the soldiers Mrs. Starr was doing a con- 
genial work. For two years she filled this position with great 
fidelity and success, and to the highest satisfaction of those who 
placed her here, and of all who were the guests of the Home. 
At the end of this service, on the closing of the Home, the Su- 
perintendent in his final report to the Western Sanitary Commis- 
sion, makes this acknowledgment of her services : 

"It would not only be improper but unjust, not to speak of 
the faithfulness and hearty co-operation of the excellent and much 
esteemed Matron, Mrs. Lucy E. Starr. Her mission has been 
full of trials and discouragements, yet she has patiently and un- 
complainingly struggled through them all; and during my fre- 

92 



730 

quent absences she has cheerfully assumed the entire responsibility 
of the Home. Her Christian forbearance and deep devotion to 
the cause of humanity have won the admiration of all who have 
come within the sphere of her labors/^ 

On the closing of the Soldiers' Home, Mrs. Starr became con- 
nected with an institution for the care of suffering refugees and 
freedmen at Memphis, under the patronage of the Freedmen's 
Aid Commission of Cincinnati, Ohio. She took a great interest 
in the thousands of this class of destitute people who had con- 
gregated in the vicinity of Memphis; visited them for weeks 
almost daily; and in the language of Mr. Waters' report, "ad- 
ministered to the sick with her own hands, going from pallet to 
pallet, giving nourishing food and medicines to many helpless and 
friendless beings." 

Thus she continued to be a worker for the suffering soldiers of 
the Union army from the beginning to the end of the war, and 
when peace had come, devoted herself to the poor and suffering 
refugees and freedmen, whom the war had driven from their 
homes and reduced to misery and want. With a wonderful forti- 
tude, endurance and heroism she persevered in her faithfulness to 
the end, and through the future of her life on earth and in heaven, 
those whom she has comforted and relieved of their sorrows and 
distresses will constitute for her a crown of rejoicing, and their 
tears of gratitude will be the brightest jewels in her diadem. 



CHARLOTTE BRADFORD. 




HIS lady, like her friend, Miss Abby W. May, of 
Boston, though a woman of extraordinary attainments 
and culture, and an earnest outspoken advocate of the 
immediate abolition of slavery before the War, is ex- 
tremely averse to any mention of her labors in behalf of the 
soldiers, alleging that they were not worthy to be compared with 
the sacrifices of those humbler and unnamed heroines, who in 
their country homes, toiled so incessantly for the boys in blue. 
We have no desire to detract one iota of the honors justly due to 
these noble and self-sacrificing women; but when one is called to 
a position of more prominent usefulness than others, and performs 
her duties with great ability, system and perseverance, though her 
merits may be no greater than those of humbler and more obscure 
persons, yet the public position which she assumes, renders her 
service so far public property, that she cannot with justice, refuse 
to accept the consequences of such public action or the sacrifices 
it entails. Holding this opinion we deem it a part of our duty 
to speak of Miss Bradford's public and official life. With her 
motives and private feelings we have no right to meddle. 

So far as we can learn. Miss Bradford's first public service in 
connection with the Sanitary Commission, was in the Hospital 
Transport Corps in the waters of the Peninsula, in 1862. Here 
she was one of the ladies in charge of the Elm City, and after- 
ward of the Knickerbocker, having as associates Mrs. Bailey, 

731 



732 

Miss Helen L. Gilson, Miss Amy M. Bradley, Mrs. Balestier, 
Miss Gardner and others. 

Miss Bradley was presently called to Washington by the offi- 
cers of the Sanitary Commission, to take charge of the Soldiers' 
Home then being established there, and Miss Bradford busied 
herself in other Relief work. In February following, Miss 
Bradley relinquished her position as Matron of the Home, to 
enter upon her great work of reforming and improving the Ren- 
dezvous of Distribution, which under the name of "Camp Mis- 
ery,'' had long been the opprobrium of the War Department, and 
Miss Bradford was called to succeed her in charge of the Soldiers' 
Home at Washington. Of the efl&ciency and beneficence of her 
administration here for two and a half years there is ample testi- 
mony. Thoroughly refined and ladylike in her manners, there 
was a quiet dignity about her which controlled the wayward and 
won the respect of all. Her executive ability and administrative 
skill were such, that throughout the realm where she presided, 
everything moved with the precision and quietness of the most 
perfect machinery. There was no hurry, no bustle, no display, 
but everything was done in time and w^ell done. To thousands 
of the soldiers just recovering from sickness or wounds, feeble and 
sometimes almost disheartened, she spoke words of cheer, and by 
her tender and kind sympathy, encouraged and strengthened them 
for the battle of life; and in all her intercourse with them she 
proved herself their true and sympathizing friend. 

After the close of the w^ar, Miss Bradford returned to private 
life at her home in Duxbury, Massachusetts. 



UNION VOLUNTEER REFRESHMENT 
SALOON OF PHILADELPHIA. 




E have already in our sketch of the labors of Mrs. 
Mary W. Lee, one of the most efficient workers for 
the soldiers in every position in which she was placed, 
given some account of this institution, one of the most 
remarkable philanthropic organizations called into being by the 
War, as in the sketch of ^liss Anna M. Ross we have made some 
allusions to the Cooper Shop Refreshment Saloon, its rival in 
deeds of charity and love for the soldier. The vast extent, the 
wonderful spirit of self-sacrifice and persevering patience and 
fidelity in which these labors were performed, demand, however, 
a more than incidental notice in a record like this. 

No philanthropic work during the war was more thoroughly 
free from self-seeking, or prompted by a higher or nobler impulse 
than that of these Refreshment Saloons. Beginning in the very 
first movements of troops in the patriotic feeling which led a poor 
man * to establish his coffee boilers on the sidewalk to give a cup 
of hot coffee to the soldiers as they waited for the train to take 
them on to Washington, and in the generous impulses of women 
in humble life to furnish such food as they could provide for the 
soldier boys, it grew to be a gigantic enterprise in its results, and 
the humble commencement ere long developed into two rival but 
not hostile organizations, each zealous to do the most for the de- 



* Mr. Bazilla S. Brown. 

733 



734 

fenders of their countiy. Very early in the movement some men 
of larger means and equally earnest sympathies were attracted to 
it, and one of them, a thorough patriot, Samuel B. Tales, Esq., 
gave himself wholly to it for four and a half years. The interest 
of the community was excited also in the labors of these humble 
men and women, and the enterprise seldom lacked for funds; the 
zealous and earnest Chairman, Mr. Arad Barrows, and Correspond- 
ing Secretary, Mr. Tales, of the Union Volunteer Refreshment Sa- 
loon, took good care of that part of the work, and Mr. W. M. Cooper 
and his associates did the same for the Cooper Shop Saloon. 

Ample provision was made to give the regiments the benefit of 
a bath and an ample repast at whatever hour of day or night 
they might come into the city. In the four and a half years of 
their labors, the Volunteer Refreshment Saloon fed between eight 
hundred thousand and nine hundred thousand soldiers and ex- 
pended about one hundred thousand dollars in money, aside from 
supplies. The Cooper Shop Saloon, closing a little earlier, fed 
about four hundred thousand men and expended nearly seventy 
thousand dollars. Both Saloons had hospitals attached to them 
for sick and wounded soldiers. The Union Volunteer Eefresh- 
ment Saloon had, during the Avar, nearly fifteen thousand patients, 
the Cooper Shop, perhaps half that number. 

But noble and patriotic as were the labors of the men connected 
with these Saloons, they were less deserving of the highest meed 
of praise than those of the women who, with a patience and fidel- 
ity which has never been surpassed, winter and summer, in cold 
and heat, at all hours of night as well as in the day, at the boom 
of the signal gun, hastened to the Refreshment Saloons and pre- 
pared those ample repasts which made Philadelphia the Mecca to 
which every soldier turned longingly during his years of Army 
life. These women were for the most part in the middle and 
humbler walks of life ; they were accustomed to care for their own 
households, and do their own work; and it required no small de- 
gree of self-denial and patriotic zeal on their part, after a day of 



YOLTINTEER REFRESHMENT SALOOX OF PHILADET.PEIIA. 735 

the housekeeper's never ending toil, to rise from their beds at 
midnight (for the trains bringing soldiers came often er at night 
than in the day time), and go through the darkness or storm, a 
considerable distance, and toil until after sunrise at the prosaic 
work of cooking and dish-washing. 

Of some of these noble women we have the material for brief 
sketches, and we know of none more deserving a place in our 
record. 

Mrs. Eliza G. Plummer was a native of Philadelphia, of 
revolutionary stock, born in 1812, and had been a widow for 
nearly twenty-five years. Though possessed of but little prop- 
erty, she had for many years been the friend and helper of the 
poor, attending them in sickness, and from her scanty purse and 
by her exertions, securing to them a decent and respectable Chris- 
tian burial when they were called to die. At the very commence- 
ment of the War, she entered into the Refreshment Saloon enter- 
prise with a zeal and perseverance that never flagged. She was 
particularly devoted to the hospital, and when the accommodations 
of the Union Volunteer Refreshment Saloon Hospital were too 
limited for the number who needed relief, as was the case in 1862, 
she received a considerable number of the worst cases of sick or 
wounded soldiers into her own house, and nursed them without 
any compensation till they recovered. At the second fair held 
by the Saloon in June, 1863, she was instant in season and out 
of season, feeding the soldiers as well as attending the fair; and 
often remaining at her post till long after midnight. In July 
and August, 1863, she was constantly engaged in nursing the 
wounded from Gettysburg, who crowded the Saloon Hospitals for 
some time, and in supplying the needs of the poor fellows who 
passed through in the Hospital Cars on their w^ay to Northern 
hospitals. For these she provided tea and toast always, having 
everything ready immediately on their arrival. These excessive 
labors impaired her health, and being called to nurse her aged 
blind mother during a severe fit of sickness, her strength failed 



736 WOMAN^S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR. 

and she sank rapidly, and died on the 21st of October, 1863. 
The soldier has lost no more earnest or faithful friend than she. 

Mrs. Mary B. Wade, a widow and now nearly eighty years 
of age, but a woman of remarkable energy and perseverance, was 
throughout the whole four and a half years, as constantly at her 
post, as faithful and as efficient as any of the Executive Commit- 
tee of the Saloon. Suffering from slight lameness, she literally 
hobbled down to the Saloon with a cane, by night or day; but 
she was never absent. Her kind, winning and motherly ways 
made her always a great favorite with the soldiers, who always 
called her Mother Wade. She is a woman of rare conscientious- 
ness, truthfulness and amiability of character. She is a native 
of Southwark, Philadelphia, and the widow of a sea-captain. 

Mrs. Ellen J. Lowry, a widow upwards of fifty years 
of age, a native of Baltimore, was in the beginning of the War a 
woman of large and powerful frame, and was surpassed by none 
in faithfulness and efficiency, but her labors among the wounded 
from Gettysburg seriously injured her health, and have rendered 
her, probably a permanent invalid; she suffered severely from 
typhoid fever, and her life was in peril in the summer of 1864. 

Mrs. Margaret Boyer, a native of Philadelphia, the wife 
of a sea-captain, but in very humble circumstances, and advanced 
in years, was also one of the faithful untiring workers of the 
Union Saloon^ but like Mrs. Lowry, lost her health by her care 
of the Gettysburg wounded, and those from the great battles of 
Grant's Campaign. 

Mrs. Priscilla Grover and Mrs. Green, both women about 
sixty years of age, were constant in their attendance and re- 
markably faithful in their services at the Saloon. Our record of 
these remarkable women of advanced age would be incomplete 
did we omit Mrs. Mary Grover, Mrs. Hannah Smith, Mrs. 
Sarah Femington and Miss Sarah Holland, all noble, per- 
severing and efficient nurses, and strongly attached to their work. 
Nor were the younger women lacking in skill, patience or activ- 




^^g ^VA-H. Ritctae. 



Mr s . Mary B . AVade . 



VOLUNTEER REFRESHMEJs^T SALOON OF PHtlLADELPHIA. 737 

ity. Mrs. Ellen B. Barrows, wife of the Chairman of the Saloon, 
though blessed with more ample means of usefulness than some 
of the others, was second to none in her untiring energy and per- 
sistency in the discharge of her duties both in the hospitals and 
the Saloon. Mrs. Eliza J. Smith, whose excessive labors have 
nearly cost her her life, Mrs. Mary A. Cassedy, Mrs. Kate B. 
Anderson, Mrs. Mary E. Field, Mrs. Emily Mason, Mrs. Anna 
A. Elkinton and Mrs. Hannah F. Bailey were all notable women 
for their steady and efficient work in the hospitals and Saloon. 
Of Mrs. Mary W. Lee and her daughter. Miss Amanda Lee, we 
have spoken elsewhere. 

Miss Catharine Bailey, Mrs. Eliza Helmbold, Mrs. Mary 
Courteney, Mrs. Elizabeth Horton and Misses Grover, Krider 
and Field were all useful and active, though their duties were less 
severe than those we have previously named. 

The Cooper Shop Saloon was smaller and its work conse- 
quently less severe, yet, as we have seen, the labors of Miss Eoss 
in its hospital proved too severe for even her vigorous constitu- 
tion, and she added another to the long list of blessed martyrs in 
the cause of liberty. Others there were in that Saloon and hos- 
pital, who, by faithful labor, patient and self-denying toil, and 
great sacrifices, won for themselves an honorable place in that 
record which the great day of assize shall reveal. We may not 
know their names, but God knows them, and will reward them for 
their deeds of mercy and love. 

93 



MRS. R. M. BIGELOW. 




IST the ordinary acceptation of the term, Mrs. BigeloAV 
has not been connected with Soldiers' Homes either in 
Washington or elsewhere ; yet there are few if any 
ladies in the country who have taken so many sick or 
wounded soldiers to their own houses, and have made them at 
home there, as she. To hundreds, if not thousands, of the soldiers 
of the Army of the Potomac, the name of ^^ Aunty Bigelow," the 
title by which she was universally known among the sick and 
wounded soldiers, is as carefully, and quite as gratefully cherished 
as the name of their commandjers. Mrs. Bigelow is a native of 
Washington, in which city she has always resided. She was 
never able, in consequence of her family duties, to devote herself 
exclusively to hospital work, but was among the first to respond 
to the call for friendly aid to the sick soldier. She was, in 1861, 
a daily visitor to the Indiana Hospital in the Patent Ofiice Build- 
ing, coming at such hours as she could spare from her home 
duties ; and she was always welcome, for no one was more skill- 
ful as a nurse than she, or could cheer and comfort the sick better. 
When she could not come, she sent such delicacies as would tempt 
the appetite of the invalid to the hospital. Many a soldier re- 
members to this day the hot cakes, or the mush and milk, or the 
custard which came from Aunty Bigelow's, on purpose for him, 
and always exactly at the right time. Mrs. R. K. Billing, a near 
relative of Mrs. Bigelow, and the mother of that Miss Pose M. 
Billing whose patriotic labors ended only with her life — a life 

738 



MES. R. M. BIGELOW. 739 

freely sacrified for the relief of our poor returned prisoners from. 
Anderson viile, as related in our sketch of the Annapolis Hospital 
Corps, — was the co-laborer of her kinswoman in these labors of 
love. Both were indefatigable in their labors for the sick soldiers ; 
both knew how to make ^Hhat bread which tasted exactly like 
mother's" to the convalescent soldier, whose feeble appetite was 
not easily tempted ; and both opened their houses, as well as their 
hearts to these poor suffering invalids, and many is the soldier 
who could and did say : ^' I don't know what would have become 
of me if I had not met with such good friends." 

Mrs. Bigelow became, ere long, the almoner of the bounty of 
many Aid Societies at the North, and vast quantities of supplies 
passed through her hands, to the patients of the hospitals ; and 
they were always judiciously distributed. She not only kept up 
a constant correspondence with these societies, but wrote regularly 
to the soldier-boys who had been under her care, after they re- 
turned to their regiments, and thus retained her influence over 
them, and made them feel that somebody cared for them, even 
when they were away from all other home influences. 

Besides these labors, which were seemingly sufficient to occupy 
her entire time, she visited continually the hospitals about the 
city, and always found room in her house for any sick one, who 
came to her begging that he might "come home," rather than 
go to a boarding-house or to a hospital. Three young officers, 
who came to her with this plea, were received and watched over 
till death relieved them of their sufferings, and cared for as ten- 
derly as they could have been in their own homes ; and those who 
came thither were nursed and tended till their recovery were 
numbered by scores. 

To all the hospital workers from abroad, and the number was 
not few, her house was always a home. There was some unap- 
propriated room or some spare bed in which they could be accom- 
modated, and they were welcome for the sake of the cause for 
which they were laboring. Had she possessed an ample fortune, 



740 woman's work in the civil war. 

this kindness^ though honorable, might not have been so note- 
worthy, but her house was small and her means far from ample. 
In the midst of these abundant labors for the soldiers, she was 
called to pass through deep affliction, in the illness and death of 
her husband ; but she suffered no personal sorrow to so absorb 
her interest as to make her unmindful of her dear hospital and 
home-work for the soldiers. This was continued unfalteringly as 
long as there was occasion for it. 

Few, if any, of the " Women of the "War," have been or have 
deserved to be, more generally beloved by the soldiers and by all 
true hospital- workers than Mrs. Bigelow. 



MISS SHARPLESS AND ASSOCIATES 




HAT the Hospital Transport service was under the 
management of the Sanitary Commission, we have else- 
where detailed, and have also given some glimpses of 
its chaotic confusion, its disorder and wretchedness un- 
der the management of government officials, early in the war. 
Under the efficient direction of Surgeon - General Hammond, 
and his successor, Surgeon-General Barnes, there was a material 
improvement ; and in the later years of the war the Government 
Hospital Transports bore some resemblance to a well ordered 
General Hospital. There was not, indeed, the complete order 
and system, the thorough ventilation, the well regulated diet, and 
the careful and systematic treatment which marked the manage- 
ment of the great hospitals, for these were to a considerable ex- 
tent impossible on shipboard, and especially where the changes 
of patients were so frequent. 

For a period of nearly seventeen months, during the last two 
years of the war, the United States Steamship Connecticut was 
employed as a hospital transport, bringing the sick and wounded 
from City Point to Washington and Baltimore, and later, closing 
up one after another, the hospitals in Virginia and on the shores 
of Maryland and Delaware, and transferring their patients to 
convalescent camps or other hospitals, or some point where they 
could be put en route for home. On this steamship Miss Hattie 
E,. Sharpless commenced her labors as matron, on the 10th of 
May, 1864, and continued with only a brief intermission till 

741 



742 • 

September 1st, 1865. She was no novice in hospital work when 
she assumed this position. A native and resident of Bloomsburg, 
Columbia County, Pa., she had first entered upon her duties as 
nurse in the Army in July, 1862, when in connection with Miss 
Eose M. Billing and Miss Belle Robinson, the latter being also a 
Pennsylvanian, she commenced hospital work at Fredericksburg. 
Subsequently, with her associate, she was at the Falls Church 
Hospital and at Antietam, and we believe also at Chancellors- 
ville and Gettysburg. She is a lady admirably adapted to the 
hospital- work ; tender, faithful, conscientious, unselfish, never 
resting while she could minister to the suffering, and happiest 
w^hen she could do most for those in her care. During her service 
on the Connecticut, thirty-three thousand sick and wounded men 
were conveyed on that steamer to hospitals in Washington, Alex- 
andria, Baltimore and other points. Constant and gentle in the 
discharge of her duties, with a kind and if possible a cheering 
word for each poor sufferer, and skillful and assiduous in provid- 
ing for them every needed comfort so far as lay in her power, 
she proved herself a true Christian heroine in the extent and 
spirit of her labors, and sent joy to the heart of many who were 
on the verge of despair. 

Her religious influence upon the men was remarkable. Never 
obtrusive or professional in her treatment of religious subjects, 
she exhibited rare tact and ability in bringing those who were in 
the possession of their reason and consciousness to converse on 
their spiritual condition, and in pointing them affectionately to 
the atoning Sacrifice for sin. 

In these works of mercy and piety she was ably seconded by 
her cousin, Miss Hattie S. Reifsnyder, of Catawissa, Columbia 
County, Pa., a lady of very similar spirit and tact, who was with 
her for about eight months ; and subsequently by Mrs. Cynthia 
Case, of IS^ewark, Ohio, who succeeded Miss Reifsnyder, and 
entered into her work in the same thorough Christian spirit. 

Miss W. F. Hareis is a native, and was previous to the war, a 



HATTIE R. SHARPLESS AND HER ASSOCIATES. 743 

resident of Providence^ Rhode Island. She was a faithful Avorker 
through the whole war, literally wearing herself out in the service. 
She commenced her work at the Indiana Hospital, in the Patent 
Office, Washington, in the spring of 1862. After the closing of 
that hospital, she transferred her service to Ascension Church 
Hospital, and subsequently early in 1863, to the Carver Hospital, 
both in Washington, where she labored with great assiduity and 
faithfulness. Early in May, 1864, she was appointed to service 
on the Transport Connecticut, where she was indefatigable in her 
service, and manifested the same tender spirit, and the same skill 
and tact, as Miss Sharpless. Of less vigorous constitution than 
her associates, she was frequently a severe sufferer from her over 
exertions. In the summer of 1864, she was transferred to the 
Hospital at Harper^s Ferry, and at that hospital and at Winches- 
ter continued her service faithfully, though amid much pain and 
weariness, to the close of the war. Though her health was much 
shattered by her labors she could not rest, and has devoted her- 
self to the instruction and training of the Freedmen from that 
time to the present. A gentleman who was associated with her 
in her service in the Carver Hospital and afterward on the Trans- 
port Connecticut, says of her: "I know of no more pure-minded, 
unselfish and earnest laborer among all the women of the war 
that came under my notice.'' 



PART VI. 



LADIES DISTINGUISHED POR OTHER SERVICES IN THE NATIONAL 

CAUSE. 




AlSriTIE ETHEPaDGE 



MRS. ANNIE ETHERIDGE. 




O woman attached to a regiment, as vivandiere, canti- 
niere, or fille du regiment (we use the French terms 
because we have no English ones which fully corres- 
pond to them)j during the recent war, has won so high 
and pure a renown as Annie Etheridge. Placed in circumstances 
of peculiar moral peril, her goodness and purity of character were 
so strongly marked that she was respected and beloved not only 
by all her own regiment, but by the brigade division and cordis 
to which that regiment belonged, and so fully convinced were 
the officers from the corps commander down, of her usefulness 
and faithfulness in the care of the wounded, that at a time when 
a peremptory order was issued from the headquarters of the army 
that all women, whatever their position or services should leave 
the camp, all the principal field officers of the corps to which her 
regiment was attached united in a petition to the general-in- 
chief, that an exception might be made in her favor. 

The greater part of Annie Etheridge's childhood was passed 
in Wisconsin. Her father was a man of considerable property, 
and her girlhood was passed in ease and luxury ; but as she drew 
near the age of womanhood, he met with misfortunes by which 
he lost nearly all he had possessed, and returned to her former 
home in Michigan. Annie remained in Wisconsin, where she had 
married, but was on a visit to her father in Detroit at the out- 
break of the war, and joined the Second Michigan E-egiment 
when they departed for the seat of war, to fulfil the office of a 



^48 WOMAN S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAE. 

daughter of the regiment, in attending to its sick and wounded. 
When that regiment was sent to Tennessee she went to the Third 
Regiment in which she had many friends, and was with them in 
every battle in which they were engaged. When their three 
years' service was completed, she with the re-enlisted veterans 
joined the Fifth Michigan. Through this whole period of more 
than four years' service she conducted herself with such modesty 
and propriety, and was at the same time so full of patriotism and 
courage, that she was a universal favorite with the soldiers as 
well as officers. 

She was in the skirmish of Blackburn's Ford, and subsequently 
in the first battle of Bull Run, where she manifested the same 
courage and presence of mind which characterized her in all her 
subsequent career in the army. She never carried a musket, 
though she had a pair of pistols in her holsters, but seldom or 
never used them. She was for a time during the winter follow- 
ing engaged in hospital service, and when the Army of the 
Potomac went to the Peninsula, during the Chickahominy cam- 
paign she was on a hospital transport with Miss Amy M. 
Bradley, and rendered excellent service there. She was a very 
tender and careful nurse, and seemed to know instinctively 
what to do for the sick and wounded. She returned to Alexan- 
dria with her regiment, and was Avith them at the second battle 
of Bull Pun, on the 29th of August, 1862. Early in this battle 
she was on a portion of the battle-field which had been warmly 
contested, where there was a rocky ledge, under shelter of which, 
some of the wounded had crawled. Annie lingered behind the 
troops, as they changed position, assisted several poor helpless 
fellows to this cover and dressed their wounds. One of these 
was William of the Seventh New York Infantry, a noble- 
looking boy, to whose parched lips she had held the cooling 
draught, and had bound up his wounds, receiving in return a 
look of unutterable gratitude from his bright blue eyes, and his 
faintly murmured ^^ God's blessing on you," when a shot from 



ANXIE ETHERIDGE. 749 

the rebel battery tore him to pieces under her very hands. She 
discovered at the same moment that the rebels were near, and 
almost upon her, and she was forced to follow in the direction 
taken by her regiment. On another portion of that bloody field, 
Annie was kneeling by the side of a soldier binding up his 
wounds, when hearing a gruff voice above her, she looked up and 
to her astonishment saw General Kearny checking his horse 
beside her. He said, ^^ That is right ; I am glad to see you here 
helping these poor fellows, and when this is over, I will have 
you made a regimental sergeant f meaning of course that she 
should receive a sergeant's pay and rations. But two days later 
the gallant Kearny was killed at Chantilly, and Annie never 
received the appointment, as has been erroneously asserted. 

At Chancellorsville on the 2d of May, 1863, when the Third 
Corps were in such extreme peril, in consequence of the panic by 
which the Eleventh Corps were broken up, one company of the 
Third Michigan, and one of the sharp-shooters were detailed as 
skirmishers. Annie, although advised to remain in the rear 
accompanied them, taking the lead ; meeting her colonel however, 
he told her to go back, as the enemy was near, and he was every 
moment expecting an attack. Very loth to fall back, she turned 
and rode along the front of a line of shallow trenches filled with 
our men ; she called to them, " Boys, do your duty and whip the 
rebels.'^ The men partially rose and cheered her, shouting 
^^ Hurrah for Annie," "Bully for you." This revealed their 
position to the rebels, who immediately fired a volley in the 
direction of the cheering ; Annie rode to the rear of the line, 
then turned to see the result ; as she did so, an officer pushed his 
horse between her and a large tree by which she was waiting, 
thus sheltering himself behind her. She looked round at him 
with surprise, when a second volley was fired, and a Mini^ ball 
whizzing by her, entered the officer's body, and he fell a corpse, 
against her and then to the ground. At the same moment an- 
other ball grazed her hand, (the only wound she received during 



750 

the war), pierced her dress, the skirt of which she was holding, 
and slightly wounded her horse. Frightened by the pain, he set 
off on a run through a dense wood, winding in and out among 
the trees so rapidly that Annie feared being torn from her saddle 
by the branches, or having her brains dashed out by violent con- 
tact with the trunks. She raised herself upon the saddle, and 
crouching on her knees clung to the pommel. The frightened 
animal as he emerged from the woods plunged into the midst of 
the Eleventh Corps, when his course was soon checked. Many 
of the men, recognizing Annie, received her with cheers. As she 
was now at a distance from her regiment, she felt a strong impulse 
to see and speak with General Berry, the commander of her 
division, with whom she was well acquainted. Meeting an aid, 
she asked where the General was. " He is not here," replied the 
aid. " He is here,'^ replied Annie ; " He is my Division General, 
and has command on the right to-day. I must see him." The 
aid turned his horse and rode up to the General, who was near at 
hand, and told him that a woman was coming up who insisted 
on seeing him. '^ It is Annie,^^ said General Berry, ^^ let her 
come ; let her come, I would risk my life for Annie, any time." 
As she approached from one side, a prisoner was brought up on 
the other, said to be an aid of General Hill's. After some words 
with him, and receiving his sword, the General sent him to the 
rear ; and after giving Annie a cordial greeting and some kind 
words, he put the prisoner under her charge, directing him to 
walk by her horse. It was her last interview with the brave 
General. Early the next morning he was slain, in the desperate 
fight for the possession of the plank road past the Chancellor 
House. In the neighborhood of the hospital, Annie, working as 
usual among the wounded, discovered an artillery man badly 
injured and very much in need of her assistance. She bound up 
his wounds and succeeded in having him brought to the hospital. 
The batteries were not usually accompanied by surgeons, and 
their men were often very much neglected, when wounded, as the 



anjn^ie etheridge. 751 

Infantry Surgeons with tlieir hands full with their own wounded 
would not, and perhaps could not, always render them speedy 
assistance. A year later Annie received the following letter, 
which was found on the body of a Lieutenant Strachan, of her 
division, who was killed in one of the early battles of Grant's 
campaign. 

Washington, D, C, January 14th, 1864. 

Annie — Dearest Friend : I am not long for this world, and I wish to thank 
you for your kindness ere I go. 

You were the only one who was ever kind to me, since I entered the Army. 
At Chancellorsville, I was shot through the body, the ball entering my side, 
and coming out through the shoulder. I was also hit in the arm, and was car- 
ried to the hospital in the woods, where I lay for hours, and not a surgeon 
would touch me ; when you came along and gave me water, and bound up my 
wounds. I do not know what regiment you belong to, and I don't know if this 
will ever reach you. There is only one man in your division that I know. I 
will try and send this to liim ; his name is Strachan, orderly sergeant in Sixty- 
third Pennsylvania volunteers. 

But should you get this, please accept my heartfelt gratitude ; and may God 
bless you, and protect you from all dangers ; may you be eminently successful 
in your present pursuit. I enclose a flower, a present from a sainted mother; it 
is the only gift I have to send you. Had I a picture, I would send you one ; 
but I never had but two, one my sister has ; the other, the sergeant I told you 
of; he would give it you, if you should tell him it is my desire. I know noth- 
ing of your history, but I hope you always have, and always may be happy ; 
and, since I will be unable to see you in this world, I hope I may meet you in 
that better world, where there is no war. May God bless you, both now and 
forever, is the wish of your grateful friend, 

Geoege H. Hill, 

Cleveland, Ohio. 

During the battle of Spottsylvania, Annie met a number of 
soldiers retreating. She expostulated with them, and at last 
shamed them into doing their duty, by offering to lead them back 
into the fight, which she did under a heavy fire from the enemy. 
She had done the same thing more than once on other battle- 
fields, not by flourishing a sword or rifle, for she carried neither; 
nor by waving a flag, for she was never color-bearer ; but by 
inspiring the men to deeds of valor by her own example, her 



752 WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIA'IL WAR. 

courage, and her presence of mind. On the 1st or 2nd of June, 
when the Second Corps attacked the enemy at Deep Bottom, 
Annie became separated from her regiment, and with her usual 
attendant, the surgeon's orderly, who carried the "pill box" (the 
medicine chest), she started in search of it, and before long, with- 
out being aware of the fact, she had passed beyond the line of 
Union pickets. Here she met an officer, apparently reconnoiter- 
ing, who told her she must turn back, as the enemy was near ; 
and hardly were the words spoken, when their skirmishers 
suddenly appeared. The officer struck his spurs into his horse 
and fled, Annie and the orderly following with all speed, and 
arrived safe within our lines. As the Rebels hoped to surprise 
our troops, they did not fire lest they should give the alarm; and 
to this fact Annie probably owed her escape unscathed. 

On the 27th of October, 1864, in one of the battles for the 
possession of Hatcher's Run and the Boydtown Plank Road, a 
portion of the Third Division of the Second Corps, was nearly 
surrounded by the enemy, in what the soldiers called the " Bull 
Ring." The regiment to which Annie was attached was sorely 
pressed, the balls flying thick and fast, so that the surgeon advised 
her to accompany him to safer quarters; but she lingered, watch- 
ing for an opportunity to render assistance. A little drummer 
boy stopped to speak to her, when a ball struck him, and he fell 
against her, and then to the ground, dead. This so startled her, 
that she ran towards the line of battle. But to her surprise, she 
found that the enemy occupied every part of the ground held a 
few moments before by Union troops. She did not pause, how- 
ever, but dashed through their line unhurt, though several of the 
chivalry fired at her. 

So strong was the confidence of the soldiers in her courage and 
fidelity to her voluntarily assumed duties, that whenever a battle 
was to be fought it was regarded as absolutely certain that 
" Gentle Annie" (so the soldiers named her) would be at hand to 
render assistance to any in need. General Birney never per- 



ANNIE ETHERIDGE. 753 

formed an act more heartily approved by his entire command, 
than when in the presence of his troops, he presented her with 
the Kearny cross. 

At the close of the war, though her health had been somewhat 
shaken by her varied and trying experiences, she felt the necessity 
of engaging in some employment, by which she could maintain 
herself, and aid her aged father, and accepted an appointment in 
one of the Government departments, where she labors assiduously 
for twelve hours daily. Her army experiences have not robbed 
her of that charming modesty and diffidence of demeanor, which 
are so attractive in a woman, or made her boastful of her adven- 
tures. To these she seldom alludes, and never in such a way as 
to indicate that she thinks herself in the least a heroine. 

95 



DELPHINE P. BAKER 




HOUGH her attentions and efforts have had a specific 
direction widely different, for the most part, from those 
of the majority of the American women, who have 
devoted themselves to the cause of the country and its 
defenders, few have been more actively and energetically em- 
ployed, or perhaps more usefully, than the subject of the following 
sketch. To her efforts, persistent, untiring, self-sacrificing, almost 
entirely does the Nation owe the organization of the National 
Military Asylum — a home for the maimed and permanently dis- 
abled veterans who gave themselves to the cause which has so 
signally triumphed. 

Delphine P. Baker was born in Bethlehem, Grafton County, 
New Hampshire, in the year 1828, and she resided in New Eng- 
land during her early youth. Her father was a respectable 
mechanic of good family, an honest, intellectual, industrious man, 
of sterling principle and a good member of society. Her mother 
possessed a large self-acquired culture, a mind of uncommon 
scope, and a vivid and powerful imagination. She was in a large 
degree capable of influencing the minds of others, and was en- 
dowed with a natural power of leadership. 

These qualities and traits of both parents we find remarkably 
developed in the daughter, and to them is doubtless largely due 
the successful achievement of the great object of her later labors. 
A feeling, from some cause always cherished by her mother, until 
it became an actual belief, that her child was destined to an ex- 

754 



BELPHINE P. BAKEE. 755 

fcraordinarj career, was so impressed upon her daughter's mind, 
and in\vrought with her higher being as to become a controlling 
impulse. It is easy, in tracing the history of Miss Baker, to 
mark the influence of this fixed idea in every act of her life. 

For some years previous to the breaking out of the war, Miss 
Baker had devoted herself to the inculcation of proper ideas of 
the sphere and culture of woman. She belonged to no party, or 
clique, had no connection with the Women's Rights Movement, 
but desired to see her sex better educated, and in the enjoyment 
of the fullest mental development. To that end she had travelled 
in many of the Western States, giving lectures upon her favorite 
subject, and largely influencing the public mind. In this employ- 
ment her acquaintance had become very extensive. 

At the time of the first breaking out of hostilities. Miss Baker 
was residing in Chicago, Illinois, enjoying a respite from public 
labors, and devoting herself to her family. But she soon saw 
that there was much need of the efforts of woman — a great deal 
to be done by her in preparing for the sudden emergency into 
which the nation had been plunged. Government had not at 
hand all the appliances for sending its newly raised forces into 
the field properly equipped, and women, who could not wield the 
bayonet, were skillful in the use of another implement as sharp 
and bright, and which just at that period could be as usefully 
brought into action. 

The devoted labors of the women of Chicago for the soldiers, 
have long since become a part of the history of the war. In these 
Miss Baker had her own, and a large share. She collected 
materials for garments, exerted her influence among her extensive 
circle of acquaintances in gathering up supplies, and providing 
for the yet small, but rapidly increasing, demand for hospital 
comforts. She took several journeys to St. Louis and Chicago, 
ministered in the hospitals, and induced others to enter upon the 
same work. Perceiving, with a quick eye, what was most needed 
in the hastily-arranged and half-furnished places to which the 



756 

sick and wounded were consigned, slie journeyed backward and 
forward, gathering up from the rich and well-disposed the needed 
articles, and then conveying them herself to those points where 
they w^ere most wanted. 

Not in strong health, a few months of such indefatigable labors 
exhausted her strength. She returned to Chicago, but her ardent 
spirit chafed in inaction. After a time she resolved to commence 
a literary enterprise in aid of the object she had so much at heart, 
and in the spring of 1862 she announced the forthcoming publi- 
cation of the "National Banner," a monthly paper of sixteen 
pages, the profits of which were to be devoted to the needs of the 
volunteer soldiery of the United States. 

After publishing in Chicago a few numbers of this very reada- 
ble paper, she removed it to Washington, D. C, where its publi- 
cation was for some time continued. It was then transferred to 
New York. 

The National Banner did not meet with all the success, its 
patriotic object and its real literary excellence, demanded. Dur- 
ing the last year of the war it was not published with complete 
regularity, owing to this cause, and to the lack of pecuniary 
means. But it was undoubtedly the means of doing a great deal 
of good. Among other things it kept constantly before the peo- 
ple the great object into which Miss Baker had now entered with 
all the ardor and the persistence of her nature. 

This object was the founding of a National Home for totally 
disabled volunteers of the Union service, and included all who 
had in their devotion to the cause of the nation become incompe- 
tent to provide for their own wants or those of their families. 

For years, with a devotion seldom equalled, and a self-sacrifice 
almost unparalleled. Miss Baker gave herself to this work. She 
wrote, she travelled, she enlisted the aid of her numerous friends, 
she importuned the Executive, Heads of Departments, and mem- 
bers of Congress. She gave herself no rest, she flinched at no 
privations. She apparently existed by the sheer necessity of liv- 



DELPHINE P. BAKEE. 757 

ing for her object, and in almost total self-abnegation she encoun- 
tered opposition, paralyzing delays, false promises, made only to 
be broken, and hypocritical advice, intended only to mislead. 

Hopeful, unsubdued, unchanged, she at last saw herself nearing 
success. The session of 1865 was drawing to a close, and repeated 
promises of reporting the bill for the establishment of the Asylum 
had been broken. But at length her almost agonized pleadings 
had their effect. Three days before the adjournment of Congress 
Hon. Henry Wilson, chairman of the Committee on Military 
Affairs, in the Senate introduced the bill. It provided for the 
establishment of a National Military and Naval Asylum for the 
totally disabled of both branches of the service. 

In the confusion and hurry of the closing scenes of the session 
the bill did not probably meet the attention it would have done 
under other circumstances. But it was well received, passed by 
a large vote of both houses, was sanctioned by the signature of 
President Lincoln, and became a law before the adjournment of 
Congress. 

The bill appointed one hundred corporators who were to organ- 
ize and assume the powers granted them under its provisions, for 
the immediate foundation of the proper establishment or estab- 
lishments, for the reception of the contemplated recipients of its 
benefits. The fund accrued from military fines and unclaimed 
pay of members of the service, was to be handed over to the use 
of the Asylum as soon as a corresponding sum was raised by 
public gift. 

Unfortunately for the success of the organization, the meeting 
of the corporators for that purpose was appointed for the day 
afterward so mournfully conspicuous as that of the funeral obse- 
quies of our assassinated President. Amidst the sad and angry 
excitement of the closing scenes of that terrible tragedy, it was 
found impossible to convene a sufficient number of the corpo- 
rators (although present in the city) to form a quorum for the 
transaction of business. The opportunity thus lost did not recur, 



768 

and though an effort was made to substitute proxies for actual 
members of the body, it was unsuccessful, and an organization 
was not effected. 

Thus a year dragged its slow length along. Miss Baker was 
busy enlarging her sphere of influence — encountering and over- 
coming opposition and obstacles, endeavoring to secure co-opera- 
tion, and in securing also personal possession of the property at 
Point Lookout, Maryland, which she believed to be a desirable 
site for the Asylum. Her object in this was that she might hold 
this property until the organization was effected, and it might be 
legally transferred to the corporators. 

Point Lookout was a watering-place previous to the war. The 
hospital property there consists of three hundred acres of land, 
occupying the point which divides the mouth of the Potomac 
River from Chesapeake Bay, at the confluence of the former with 
the Bay. One or more large hotels, numerous cottages and other 
buildings remained from the days of peace. The Government 
also established there, during the war, Hammond General Hos- 
pital with its extensive buildings, and a stockade and encampment 
for prisoners. The air is salubrious, the land fertile, a supply of 
excellent water brought from neighboring heights, and an exten- 
sive oyster-bed and a fine beach for bathing, add to its attractions. 
Believing the place well calculated to meet the wants of the 
Asylum, Miss Baker desired to secure the private property to- 
gether with a grant from the Government of that portion which 
belongs to it. She succeeded in securing the latter, and in delay- 
ing the contemplated sale of the former. 

A change being imperatively demanded in the Act of Incor- 
poration, efforts were immediately commenced at the next session 
of Congress to effect this purpose. Again the painful, anxious 
delays, again the wearisome opposition were encountered. But 
Miss Baker and the movement had friends — and in the highest 
quarters. Her efforts were countenanced and aided by these, but 
it was not till the session of 1866 approached its close that the 



DELPHINE P. BAKEE. 759 

amended bill was reached, and the votes of both Houses at last 
placed the whole matter on a proper footing, and in competent 
hands. 

With Major-General Butler at the head of the Managing 
Board of Trustees, the successful commencement of the Institu- 
tion is a foregone conclusion. The Board is composed of some 
of the best men of the Nation — men, some of them unequalled 
in their various spheres. The United States will soon boast for 
its disabled defenders Institutions (for the present management 
contemplate the establishment of Homes at several points), fully 
equal to those which the great Powers of Europe have erected 
for similar purposes. In the autumn and winter of 1866-7 Miss 
Baker succeeded in consummating the purchase, and tender to the 
Trustees of the Asylum of the Point Lookout property. 

The labors of Miss Baker for this purpose are now ended. She 
retires, not to rest or idleness, but still to lend her efforts to this 
or any other great and worthy cause. She has no official connec- 
tion with the organization which controls the destiny of the 
Asylum. But it will not cease to be remembered in this country 
that to her efforts the United States owes in great part all that, as 
a nation, it has done for the men who have thus given all but 
life itself to its cause. 



MRS.S. BURGER STEARNS 




HIS lady is a native of ISTew York city, where she re- 
sided for the first seven years of her life. In 1844 
her parents removed to Michigan, where she has lived 
ever since, receiving her education at the best schools, 
and spending much time in preparation for a classical course at 
the State University. She was, however, with other young ladies, 
denied admission there, on the ground of expediency ; and finally 
entered the State Normal School where she graduated with high 
honors. 

She soon after became Mrs. Stearns, her husband being a gradu- 
ate of the Literary and Law Departments of the Michigan 
Universitv. But choosinp; to devote himself to the service of his 
country, he entered the army as First Lieutenant, afterwards 
rising to the rank of Colonel. 

Mrs. Stearns determined to devote herself to the work of lectur- 
ing in behalf of the Aid movement, and did extensive, and much 
appreciated services in this direction. From time to time she 
visited the hospitals, and learned the details of the work, as well 
as the necessities required there ; in that way rendering herself 
peculiarly competent for her chosen field of labor. She con- 
tinued in this service until the close of the war, accomplishing 
much good, and laboring with much acceptance. 

760 



BARBARA FRIETCHIE 




ARBAEA FRIETCHIE was an aged lady of Freder- 
ick, Maryland, of German birth, but intensely patriotic. 
In September, 1862, when Lee's army were on their 
way to Antietam, "Stonewall" Jackson's corps passed 
through Frederick, and the inhabitants, though a majority of 
them were loyal, resolved not to provoke the rebels unnecessarily, 
knowing that they could make no effectual resistance to such a 
large force, and accordingly took down their flags ; but Dame 
Barbara though nearly eighty years of age could not brook that 
the flag of the Union should be humbled before the rebel ensign, 
and from her upper window waved her flag, the only one visible 
that day in Frederick. Whittier has told the whole story so ad- 
mirably that we cannot do better than to transfer his exquisite 
poem to our pages. Dame Barbara died in 1865. 

BARBARA FRIETCHIE. 

Up from the meadows rich with corn, 
Clear in the cool September morn, 

The clustered spires of Frederick stand. 
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland. 

Round about them orchards sweep, 
Apple and peach trees fruited deep. 

Fair as a garden of the Lord 
To the eyes of the famished rebel horde, 
96 761 



762 



On that pleasant morn of the early fall 
When Lee marched over the mountain-wall — 

Over the mountains winding down, 
Horse and foot, into Frederick town. 

Forty flags with their silver stars, 
Forty flags with their crimson bars, 

Flapped in the morning wind : the sun 
Of noon looked down, and saw not one. 

Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then. 
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten ; 

Bravest of all in Frederick town, 

She took up the flag the men hauled down ; 

In her attic-window the staff she set. 
To show that one heart was loyal yet, 

Up the street came the rfebel tread, 
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead. 

Under his slouched hat left and right 
He glanced ; the old flag met his sight. 

"Halt!" — the dust-brown ranks stood fast, 
" Fire !" — out blazed the rifle-blast. 

It shivered the window, pane and sash : 
It rent the banner with seam and gash. 

Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff" 
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf; 

She leaned far out on the window-sill. 
And shook it forth with a royal will. 

"Shoot, if you must, this old gray head. 
But spare your country's flag," she said. 

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame, 
Over the face of the leader came ; 

The nobler nature within him stirred 
To life at tliat woman's deed and word : 



BARBARA FRIETCHIE. 763 

" Who touches a hair of yon gray head 
Dies like a dog ! March on !" he said. 

All day long through Frederick street 
Sounded the tread of marching feet : 

All day long that free flag tost 
Over the heads of the rebel host. 

Ever its torn folds rose and fell 

On the loyal winds that loved it well ; 

And through the hill-gaps sunset light 
Shone over it with a warm good-night. 

Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er, 

And the Kebel rides on his raids no more. 

Honor to her ! and let a tear 

Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier. 

Over Barbara Frietchie's grave, 
Flag of Freedom and Union, wave ! 

Peace and order and beauty draw 
Round thy symbol of light and law ; 

And ever the stars above look down 
On thy stars below in Frederick town I 



MRS. HETTY M. McEWEN. 






RS. McEWEN" is an aged woman of Nashville, Ten- 
nessee, of revolutionary stock, having had six uncles in 
the revolutionary war, four of whom fell at the battle 
of King's Mountain. Her husband. Colonel Robert 
H. McEwen, was a soldier in the war of 1812, as his father had 
been in the revolution. Her devotion to the Union, like that of 
most of those who had the blood of our revolutionary fathers in 
their veins is intense, and its preservation and defense were the 
objects of her greatest concern. Making a flag with her own 
hands, she raised it in the first movements of secession, in Nash- 
ville, and when through the treachery of Isham Harris and his 
co-conspirators, Tennessee was dragged out of the Union, and the 
secessionists demanded that the flag should be taken down, the 
brave old couple nailed it to the flag-stafi^, and that to the chim- 
ney of their house. The secessionists threatened to fire the house 
if it was not lowered, and the old lady armed with a shot-gun, 
undertook to defend it, and drove them away. She subsequently 
refused to give up her fire-arms on the requisition of the traitor 
Harris. Mrs. Lucy H. Hooper has told the story of the rebel 
efforts to procure the lowering of her flag very forcibly and 
truthfully : 

HETTY McEWEN. 
Oh Hetty McEwen ! Hetty McEwen ! 
What were the angry rebels doing, 
That autumn day, in Nashville town. 
They looked aloft with oath and frown, 
764 



HETTY McEWElS". 765 

And saw the Stars and Stripes wave high. 
Against the blue of the sunny sky ; 
Deep was the oath, and dark the frown, 
And loud the shout of " Tear it down !" 

For over Nashville, far and wide, 
Rebel banners the breeze defied, 
Staining heaven with crimson bars ; 
Only the one old "Stripes and Stars" 
Waved, where autumn leaves were strewing, 
Eound the home of Hetty McEwen. 

Hetty McEwen watched that day 
Where her son on his death-bed lay ; 
She heard the hoarse and angry cry — 
The blood of "76" rose high. 
Out-flashed her eye, her cheek grew warm. 
Up rose her aged stately form ; 
From her window, with steadfast brow, 
She looked upon the crowd below. 

Eyes all aflame with angry fire 

Flashed on her in defiant ire. 

And once more rose the angry call, 
"Tear down that flag, or the house shall fall!" 

Never a single inch quailed she, 

Her answer rang out firm and free : 
"Under the roof where that flag flies. 

Now my son on his death-bed lies; 

Born where that banner floated high, 

'Neath its folds he shall surely die. 

Not for threats nor yet for suing 

Shall it fall," said Hetty McEwen. 

The loyal heart and steadfast hand 
Claimed respect from the traitor band ; 
The fiercest rebel quailed that day 
Before that woman stern and gray. 
They went in silence, one by one — 
Left her there with her dying son, 
And left the old flag floating free 
O'er the bravest heart in Tennessee, 



766 



To wave in loyal splendor there 

Upon that treason-tainted air, 

Until the rebel rule was o'er 

And Nashville town was ours once more. 

Came the day when Fort Donelson 

Fell, and the rebel reign was done ; 

And into Nashville, Buell, then, 

Marched with a hundred thousand men, 

With waving flags and rolling drums 

Past the heroine's house he comes ; 

He checked his steed and bared his head, 
" Soldiers ! salute that flag," he said ; 
" And cheer, boys, cheer ! — give three times three 

For the bravest woman in Tennessee I" 



OTHER DEFENDERS OF THE FLAG. 




ARBARA FRIETCHIE and Hettie McEwen were 
g not the only women of our country who were ready to 

risk their lives in the defense of the National Flag. 

Mrs. Effie Titlow, as we have already stated elsewhere, 
displayed the flag wrapped about her, at Middletown, Maryland, 
when the Rebels passed through that town in 1863. Early in 
1861, while St. Louis yet trembled in the balance, and it seemed 
doubtful whether the Secessionists were not in the majority, 
Alfred Clapp, Esq., a merchant of that city, raised the flag on his 
own house, then the only loyal house for nearly half a mile, on 
that street, and nailed it there. His secession neighbors came 
to the house and demanded that it should be taken down. 
Never ! said his heroic wife, afterwards president of the Union 
Ladies' Aid Society. The demand was repeated, and one of the 
secessionists at last said, " Well, if you will not take it down, I 
will,'' and moved for the stairs leading to the roof. Quick as 
thought, Mrs. Clapp intercepted him. " You can only reach that 
flag over my dead body," said she. Finding her thus determined, 
the secessionist left, and though frequent threats were muttered 
against the flag, it was not disturbed. 

Mrs. Moore (Parson Brownlow's daughter) was another of 
these fearless defenders of the flag. In June, 1861, the Rebels 
were greatly annoyed at the sturdy determination of the Parson 
to keep the Stars and Stripes floating over his house ; and dele- 
gation after delegation came to his dwelling to demand that they 
should be lowered. They were refused, and generally went ofp 

767 



768 WOM AINU'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR. 

in a rage. On one of these occasions^ nine men from a Louisiana 
regiment stationed at Knoxville, determined to see the flag 
humbled. Two men were chosen as a committee to proceed 
to the parson's house to order the Union ensign down. Mrs. 
Moore (the parson's daughter) answered the summons. In 
answer to her inquiry as to what was their errand, one said, rudely : 

"We have come to take down that d — d rag you flaunt from 
your roof — the Stripes and Stars." 

Mrs. Moore stepped back a pace or two within the door, drew 
a revolver from her dress pocket, and leveling it, answered: 

" Come on, sirs, and take it down !'' 

The chivalrous Confederates were startled. 

"Yes, come on!" she said, as she advanced toward them. 

They cleared the piazza, and stood at bay on the wall. 

"We'll go and get more men, and then d — d if it don't come 
down !" 

"Yes, go and get more men — you are not men!" said the heroic 
woman, contemptuously, as the two backed from the place and 
disappeared. 

Miss Alice Taylor, daughter of Mrs. ^Nellie Maria Taylor, of 
New Orleans, a young lady of great beauty and intelligence, pos- 
sessed much of her mother's patriotic spirit. The flag was 
always suspended in one or another of the rooms of Mrs. Taylor's 
dwelling, and notwithstanding the repeated searches made by the 
Rebels it remained there till the city was occupied by Union 
troops. The beauty and talent of the daughter, then a young 
lady of seventeen, had made her very popular in the city. In 

1860, she had made a presentation speech when a flag was pre- 
sented to one of the New Orleans Fire Companies. In May, 

1861, a committee of thirteen gentlemen called on Mrs. Taylor, 
and informed her that the ladies of the district had wrought a 
flag for the Crescent City (Rebel) regiment to carry on their 
march to Washington, and that the services of her daughter 
Alice were required to make the presentation speech. Of course 



OHEE DEFENDERS OF THE FLAG. 769 

Mrs. Taylor's consent was not given^ and the committee insisted 
that they must see the young lady, and that she must make the 
presentation address. She was accordingly called, and after 
hearing their request, replied that she would readily consent on 
two conditions. First, that her mother's permission should be 
obtained; and second, that the Stars and Stripes should wave 
around her, and decorate the arch over her head, as on the former 
occasion. The committee, finding that they could get no other 
terms, withdrew, vexed and mortified at their failure. 

Mrs. Booth, the widow of Major Booth, who fell contending 
against fearful odds at Fort Pillow, at the time of the bloody 
massacre, a few weeks after presented the blood-stained flag of 
the fort which had been saved by one of the few survivors, to 
the remnant of the First Battalion of Major Booth's regiment, 
then incorporated with the Sixth United States Heavy Artillery, 
with these thrilling words, "Boys, I have just come from a visit 
to the hospital at Mound City. There I saw your comrades, 
wounded at the bloody struggle in Fort Pillow. There I found 
the flag — you recognize it ! One of your comrades saved it from 
the insulting touch of traitors. I have given to my country all 
I had to give — my husband — such a gift ! Yet I have freely 
given him for freedom and my country. Next to my husband's 
cold remains, the dearest object left to me in the world, is that 
flag — the flag that waved in proud defiance over the Avorks of 
Fort Pillow! Soldiers! this flag I give to you, knowing that 
you will ever remember the last words of my noble husband, 
'never surrender the flag to traitors P^^ 

Colonel Jackson received from her hand — on behalf of his 
command — the blood-stained flag, and called upon his regiment 
to receive it as such a gift ought to be received. At that call, he 
and every man of the regiment fell upon their knees, and 
solemnly appealing to the God of battles, each one swore to 
avenge their brave and fallen comrades, and never, never surrender 
the flag to traitors, 
97 



MILITARY HEROINES, 




HE number of women who actually bore arms in the 
war, or who, though generally attending a regiment as 
nurses and vivandieres, at times engaged in the actual 
conflict was much larger than is generally supposed, 
and embraces persons of all ranks of society. Those who from 
whatever cause, w^hether romance, love or patriotism, and all 
these had their influence, donned the male attire and concealed 
their sex, are hardly entitled to a place in our record, since they 
did not seek to be known as women, but preferred to pass for 
men ; but aside from these there were not a few who, without 
abandoning the dress or prerogatives of their sex, yet performed 
skillfully and well the duties of the other. 

Among these we may name Madame Turchin, wife of General 
Turchin, who rendered essential service by her coolness, her 
thorough knowledge of military science, her undaunted courage, 
and her skill in command. She is the daughter of a Russian 
officer, and had been brought up in the camps, where she w^s 
the pet and favorite of the regiment up to nearly the time of her 
marriage to General Turchin, then a subordinate officer in that 
army. When the war commenced she and her husband had been 
for a few years residents of Illinois, and when her husband was 
commissioned colonel of a regiment of volunteers she prepared 
at once to follow him to the field. During the march into Ten- 
nessee in the spring of 1862, Colonel Turchin ^vas taken seriously 
ill, and for some days was carried in an ambulance on the route. 

770 



MILITARY HEROINES. 771 

Madame Turchin took command of the regiment during his ill- 
ness, and while ministering kindly and tenderly to her husband, 
filled his place admirably as commander of the regiment. Her 
administration was so judicious that no complaint or mutiny was 
manifested, and her commands were obeyed with the utmost 
promptness. In the battles that followed, she was constantly 
under fire, now encouraging the men, and anon rescuing some 
wounded man from the place where he had fallen, administering 
restoratives and bringing him ofP to the field-hospital. When, 
in consequence of the ^^ Athens afPair,^^ Colonel Turchin was 
court-martialed and an attempt made by the conservatives to have 
him driven from the army, she hastened to Washington, and by 
her skill and tact succeeded in having the court-martial set aside 
and her husband promoted to the rank of Brigadier-General, and 
confounded his accusers by bringing his commission and the order 
to abandon the trial into court, just as the officers comprising it 
were about to find him guilty. In all the subsequent campaigns 
at the West, Madame Turchin was in the field, confining herself 
usually to ministrations of mercy to the wounded, but ready if 
occasion required, to lead the troops into action and always mani- 
festing the most perfect indifference to the shot and shell or the 
whizzing minie balls that fell around her. She seemed entirely 
devoid. of fear, and though so constantly exposed to the enemy's 
fire never received even a scratch. 

Another remarkable heroine who, while from the lower walks 
of life, was yet faithful and unwearied in her labors for the re- 
lief of the soldiers who were wounded and who not unfrequently 
took her place in the ranks, or cheered and encouraged the men 
when they were faltering and ready to retreat, was Bridget 
Divers, better known as " Michigan Bridget,'' or among Sheri- 
dan's men as " Irish Biddy." A stout robust Irish woman, she 
accompanied the First Michigan Cavalry regiment in which her 
husband was a private soldier, to the field, and remained with 
that regiment and the brigade to which it belonged until the close 



772 woman's work in the ciyil wae. 

of the war. She became well knoAvn throughout the brigade for 
her fearlessness and daring, and her skill in bringing off the 
wounded. Occasionally when a soldier whom she knew fell in 
action, after rescuing him if he was only wounded, she would 
take his place and fight as bravely as the best. In two instances 
and perhaps more, she rallied and encouraged retreating troops 
and brought them to return to their position, thus aiding in pre- 
venting a defeat. Other instances of her energy and courage 
are thus related by Mrs. M. M. Husband, who knew her well. 

" In one of Sheridan's grand raids, during the latter days of the 
rebellion, she, as usual, rode with the troops night and day wear- 
ing out several horses, until they dropped from exhaustion. In 
a severe cavalry engagement, in which her regiment took a promi- 
nent part, her colonel was wounded, and her captain killed. She 
accompanied the former to the rear, where she ministered to his 
needs, and when placed in the cars, bound to City Point Hospi- 
tals, she remained with him, giving all the relief in her power, 
on that fatiguing journey, although herself almost exhausted, 
having been without sleep four days and nights. After seeing 
hei^ colonel safely and comfortably lodged in the hospital, she 
took one night's rest, and returned to the front. Finding that 
her captain's body had not been recovered, it being hazardous to 
m.ake the attempt, she resolved to rescue it, as " it never should 
be left on rebel soil." So, with her orderly for sole companion, 
she rode fifteen miles to the scene of the late conflict, found the 
body she sought, strapped it upon her horse, rode back seven miles 
to an embalmer's, where she waited whilst the body was em- 
balmed, then again strapping it on her horse, she rode several 
miles further to the cars in which, with her precious burden she 
proceeded to City Point, there obtained a rough coffin, and for- 
warded the whole to Michigan. Without any delay Biddy re- 
turned to her Regiment, told some officials, that wounded men 
had been left on the field from which she had rescued her Cap- 
tain's body. They did not credit her tale, so she said, " Furnish 



MILITARY HEROINES. 773 

me some ambulances and I will bring them in.'^ The convey- 
ances were given her, she retraced her steps to the deserted battle- 
field, and soon had some eight or ten poor sufferers in the wagons, 
and on their way to camp. The roads were rough, and their 
moans and cries gave evidence of intense agony. While still 
some miles from their destination, Bridget saw several rebels ap- 
proaching, she ordered the drivers to quicken their pace, and 
endeavoured to urge her horse forward, but he baulked and re- 
fused to move. The drivers becoming alarmed, deserted their 
charge and fled to the woods, while the wounded men begged 
that they might not be left to the mercy of the enemy, and to 
suffer in Southern prisons. The rebels soon came up, Bridget 
plead with them to leave the sufferers unmolested, but they 
laughed at her, took the horses from the ambulances, and such 
articles of value as the men possessed, and then dashed off the 
way they came. Poor Biddy was almost desperate, darkness 
coming on, and with none to help her, the wounded men beseech- 
ing her not to leave them. Fortunately, an officer of our army 
rode up to see what the matter was, and soon sent horses and as- 
sistance to the party.'^ 

When the war ended, Bridget accompanied her regiment to 
Texas, from whence she returned with them to Michigan, but the 
attractions of army life were too strong to be overcome, and she 
has since joined one of the regiments of the regular army stationed 
on the plains in the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains. 

Mrs. Kady Brownell, the wife of an Orderly Sergeant of the First 
and afterwards of the Fifth Rhode Island Infantry, who, like 
Madame Turchin was born in the camp, and was the daughter of 
a Scottish soldier of the British army, was another of these half- 
soldier heroines ; adopting a semi-military dress, and practicing 
daily with the sword and rifle, she became as skillful a shot and as 
expert a swordsman as any of the company of sharp-shooters to 
which she was attached. Of this company she was the chosen 
color-bearer, and asking no indulgence, she marched with the 



774 woman's WOT.K IN THE CIVIL WAR. 

men, carrying the flag and participating in the battle as bravely 
as any of her comrades. Inthe first battle of Bull Run, she stood 
by her colors and maintained her position till all her regiment and 
several others had retreated, and came very near falling into the 
hands of the enemy. She was in the expedition of General 
Burnside to Roanoke Island and ISTewbern and by her coolness 
and intrepidity saved the Fifth Rhode Island from being fired 
upon by our own troops by mistake. Her husband was severely 
wounded in the engagement at Newbern, and she rescued him 
from his position of danger and having made him as comfortable 
as possible attempted to rescue others of the wounded, both rebel 
and Union troops. By some of the rebels, both men and women, 
she was grossly insulted, but she persevered in her efforts to help 
the Avounded, though not without some heart-burnings for their 
taunts. Her husband recovering very slowly, and being finally 
pronounced unfit for service, she returned to Rhode Island with 
him after nursing him carefully for eighteen months or more, and 
received her discharge from the army. 

There were very, probably, many others of this class of heroines 
who deserve a place in our record ; but there is great difficulty in 
ascertaining the particulars of their history, and in some cases 
they failed to maintain that unsullied reputation without which 
courage and daring are of little worth. 



THE WOMEN OF GETTYSBURG. 




HOSE who have read Miss Georgiana Woolsey's charm- 
ing narrative " Three Weeks at Gettysburg," in this 
volume^ will have formed a higher estimate of the 
women of Gettysburg than of the men. There were 
some exceptions among the latter, some brave earnest-hearted 
men, though the farmers of the vicinity were in general both 
cowardly and covetous ; but the women of the village have won 
for themselves a high and honorable record, for their faithfulness 
to the flag, their generosity and their devotion to the wounded. 

Chief among these, since she gave her life for the cause, we 
must reckon Mes. Jek^nie Wade. Her house was situated in 
the valley between Oak Ridge and Seminary Hill, and was 
directly in range of the guns of both armies. But Mrs. Wade 
was intensely patriotic and loyal, and on the morning of tlie third 
day of the battle, that terrible Friday, July 3, she volunteered to 
bake bread for the Union troops. The morning passed without 
more than an occasional shot, and though in the midst of danger, 
she toiled over her bread, and had succeeded in baking a large 
quantity. About two o'clock, P. M., began that fearful artillery 
battle which seemed to the dwellers in that hitherto peaceful 
valley to shake both earth and heaven. Louder and more deaf- 
ening crashed the thunder from two hundred and fifty cannon, 
but as each discharge shook her humble dwelling, she still toiled 
on unterrified and only intent on her patriotic task. The rebels, 
who were nearest her had repeatedly ordered her to quit the 

775 



776 

premises, but she steadily refused. At length a shot from the 
rebel batteries struck her in the breast killing her instantly. A 
rebel officer of high rank was killed almost at the same moment 
near her door, and the rebel troops hastily constructing a rude 
coffin, Avere about to place the body of their commander in it for 
burial, when, in the swaying to and fro of the armies, a Union 
column drove them from the ground, and finding Mrs. Wade 
dead, placed her in the coffin intended for the rebel officer. In 
that coffin she was buried the next day amidst the tears of 
hundreds who knew her courage and kindness of heart. 

Miss Caerie Sheads, the principal of Oak Eidge Female 
Seminary, is also deserving of a place in our record for her cour- 
age, humanity and true womanly tact. The Seminary buildings 
were within a few hundred yards of the original battle-field of 
the first day's fight, and in the course of the day's conflict, after 
the death of General Reynolds, the Union troops were driven by 
the greatly superior force of the enemy into the grounds of the 
Seminary itself, and most of them swept past it. The Ninety- 
seventh New York volunteer infantry commanded on that day 
by Lieutenant-Colonel, afterwards General Charles Wheelock, 
were surrounded by the enemy in the Seminary grounds, and after 
repeated attempts to break through the ranks of the enemy, were 
finally compelled to surrender. Miss Sheads who had given 
her pupils a holiday on the previous day, and had suddenly 
found herself transformed into the lady superintendent of a hospi- 
tal, for the wounded were brought to the Seminary, at once re- 
ceived Colonel Wheelock and furnished him with the signal for 
surrender. The rebel commander demanded his sword, but the 
colonel refused to give it up, as it was a gift of friends. An alter- 
cation ensued and the rebel officer threatened to kill Colonel 
Wheelock. Mr. Sheads, Miss Carrie's father, interposed and en- 
deavored to prevent the collision., but was soon pushed out of the 
way, and the rebel officer again presented his pistol to shoot his 
prisoner. Miss Sheads now rushed between them and remon- 



THE WOMEN OF GETTYSBURG. 777 

strated with the rebel on his inhumanityj while she urged the 
colonel to give up his sword. He still refused^ and at this moment 
the entrance of other prisoners attracted the attention of the rebel 
officer for a few moments, when Miss Sheads unbuckled his sword 
and concealed it in the folds of her dress unnoticed by the rebel 
officer. Colonel Wheelock, when the attention of his foe was 
again turned to him, said that one of his men who had passed 
out had his sword, and the rebel officer ordered him with the 
other prisoners to march to the rear. Five days after the battle 
the colonel, who had made his escape from the rebels, returned to 
the Seminary, when Miss Sheads returned his sword, with which 
he did gallant service subsequently. 

The Seminary buildings were crowded with wounded, mostly 
rebels, who remained there for many weeks and were kindly 
cared for by Miss Sheads and her pupils. The rebel chief under- 
took to use the building and its observatory as a signal station 
for his army, contrary to Miss Sheads' remonstrances, and drew 
the fire of the Union army upon it by so doing. The buildings 
were hit many times and perforated by two shells. But amid 
the danger, Miss Sheads was as calm and self-possessed as in her 
ordinary duties, and soothed some of her pupils who were terrified 
by the hurtling shells. From the grounds of the Seminary she 
and several of her pupils witnessed the terrible conflict of Friday. 
The severe exertion necessary for the care of so large a number 
of wounded, for so long a period, resulted in the permanent injury 
of Miss Sheads' health, and she has been since that time an in- 
valid. Two of her brothers were slain in the war, and two others 
disabled for life. Few families have made greater sacrifices in 
the national cause. 

Another young lady of Gettysburg, Miss Amelia Harmon, a 
pupil of Miss Sheads, displayed a rare heroism under circum- 
stances of trial. The house where she resided with her aunt was 
the best dwelling-house in the vicinity of Gettysburg, and about 
a mile west of the village, on Oak or Seminary Eidge. During 

98 



778 

the fighting on Wednesday (the first day of the battle) it was for 
a time forcibly occupied by the Union sharp-shooters who fired 
upon the rebels from it. Towards evening the Union troops 
having retreated to Cemetery Hill^ the house came into possession 
of the rebels, who bade the family leave it as they were about to 
burn itj in consequence of its having been used as a fort. Miss 
Harmon and her aunt both protested against this, explaining that 
the occupation was forcible and not wdth their consent. The 
young lady added that her mother, not now living, was a South- 
ern woman, and that she should blush for her parentage if Southern 
men would thus fire the house of defenseless females, and deprive 
them of a home in the midst of battle. One of the rebels, 
upon this, approached her and proposed in a confidential way, 
that if she would prove that she was not a renegade Southerner 
by hurrahing for the Southern Confederacy, he would see what 
could be done. " Never V' was the indignant reply of the truly 
loyal girl, " burn the house if you will ! I will never do that, 
while the Union which has protected me and my friends, exists.^' 
The rebels at once fired the house, and the brave girl and her 
aunt made their way to the home of friends, running the gauntlet 
of the fire of both armies, and both were subsequently unwearied 
in their labors for the wounded. 



LOYAL WOMEN OF THE SOUTH 




E have already had occasion to mention some of those 
whose labors had been conspicuous^ and especially Mrs. 
Sarah R. Johnson, Mrs. ISTellie M. Taylor, Mrs. Grier, 
Mrs. Clapp, Miss Breckinridge, Mrs. Phelps, Mrs. 
Shepard Wells, and others. There was however, beside these, a 
large class, even in the chief cities of the rebellion, who not only 
never bowed their knee to the idol of secession, but who for their 
fidelity to principle, their patient endurance of proscription and 
their humanity and helpfulness to Union men, and especially 
Union prisoners, are deserving of all honor. 

The loyal women of Richmond were a noble band. Amid 
obloquy, persecution and in some cases imprisonment (one of them 
was imprisoned for nine months for aiding Union prisoners) they 
never faltered in their allegiance to the old flag, nor in their sym- 
pathy and services to the Union prisoners at Libby and Belle 
Isle, and Castle Thunder. With the aid of twenty-one loyal 
white men in Richmond they raised a fund of thirteen thousand 
dollars in gold, to aid Union prisoners, while their gifts of cloth- 
ing, food and luxuries, were of much greater value. Some of 
these ladies were treated with great cruelty by the rebels, and 
finally driven from the city, but no one of them ever proved 
false to loyalty. In Charleston, too, hot-bed of the rebellion as 
it was, there was a Union league, of which the larger proportion 
were women, some of them wives or daughters of prominent 
rebels, who dared everything, even their life, their liberty and 

779 



780 

their social position, to render aid and comfort to the Union 
soldiers, and to facilitate the return of a government of liberty 
and law. Had we space we might fill many pages with the heroic 
deeds of these noble women. Through their assistance, scores of 
Union men were enabled to make their escape from the prisons, 
some of them under fire, in which they were confined, and often 
after almost incredible sufferings, to find their way to the Union 
lines. Others suffering from the frightful jail fever or wasted by 
privation and wearisome marches with little or no food, received 
from them food and clothing, and were thus enabled to maintain 
existence till the time for their liberation came. The negro 
women were far more generally loyal than their mistresses, and 
their ready wit enabled them to render essential service to the 
loyal whites, service for which, when detected, they often suffered 
cruel tortures, whipping and sometimes death. 

In New Orleans, before the occupation of the city by the Union 
troops under General Butler, no woman could declare herself a 
Unionist without great personal peril ; but as we have seen there 
were those who risked all for their attachment to the Union even 
then. Mrs. Taylor was by no means the only outspoken Union 
woman of the city, though she may have been the most fearless. 
Mrs. Minnie Don Carlos, the wife of a Spanish gentleman of the 
city, was from the beginning of the war a decided Union woman, 
and after its occupation by Union troops was a constant and faith- 
ful visitor at the hospitals and rendered great service to Union 
soldiers. Mrs. Flanders, wife of Hon. Benjamin Flanders, and 
her two daughters, Miss Florence and Miss Fanny Flanders were 
also well known for their persistent Unionism and their abundant 
labors for the sick and wounded. Mrs. and Miss Carrie Wolfley, 
Mrs. Dr. Kirchner, Mrs. Mills, Mrs. Bryden, Mrs. Barnett and 
Miss Bennett, Mrs. Wibrey, Mrs. Richardson, Mrs. Hodge, Mrs. 
Thomas, Mrs. Howell, Mrs. Charles Howe of Key West, and 
Miss Edwards from Massachusetts, were all faithful and earnest 
workers in the hospitals throughout the war, and Union women 



LOYAL WOMEN OF TPIE SOUTH. 781 

\vhen their Unionism involved peril. Miss Sarah Chappell, Miss 
Cordelia Baggett and Miss Ella Gallagher, also merit the same 
commendation. 

Nor should we fail to do honor to those loyal women in the 
mountainous districts and towns of the interior of the South. 
Our prisoners as they were marched through the towns of the 
South always found some tender pitying hearts, ready to do some- 
thing for their comfort, if it were only a cup of cold water for 
their parched lips, or a corn dodger slyly slipped into their hand. 
Oftentimes these humble but patriotic women received cruel 
abuse, not only from the rebel soldiers, but from rebel Southern 
women, who, though perhaps wealthier and in more exalted social 
position than those whom they scorned, had not their tenderness of 
heart or their real refinement. Indeed it would be difficult to find 
in history, even among the fierce brutal women of the French 
revolution, any record of conduct more absolutely fiendish than 
that of some of the women of the South during the war. They 
insisted on the murder of helpless prisoners ; in some instances 
shot them in cold blood themselves, besought their lovers and 
husbands to bring them Yankee skulls, scalps and bones, for 
ornaments, betrayed innocent men to death, engaged in intrigues 
and schemes of all kinds to obtain information of the movements 
of Union troops, to convey it to the enemy, and in every mani- 
festation of malice, petty spite and diabolical hatred against the 
flag under which they had been reared, and its defenders, they at- 
tained a bad pre-eminence over the evil spirits of their sex since 
the world began. It is true that these were not the characteristics 
of all Southern, disloyal women, but they were sufficiently com- 
mon to make the rebel women of the south the objects of scorn 
among the people of enlightened nations. Many of these 
patriotic loyal women, of the mountainous districts, rendered 
valuable aid to our escaping soldiers, as well as to the Union 
scouts who were in many cases their own kinsmen. Messrs. 
Richardson and Browne, the Tribune correspondents so long im- 



782 woman's work in the civil war. 

prisoned, have given due lionor to one of this class, ^^ the nameless 
heroine" as they call her, Miss Melvina Stevens, a young and 
beautiful girl who from the 'age of fourteen had guided escaping 
Union prisoners past the most dangerous of the rebel garrisons 
and outposts, on the borders of North Carolina and East Tennes- 
see, at the risk of her liberty and life, solely from her devotion 
to the national cause. The mountainous regions of East Ten- 
nessee, Northern Alabama and Northern Georgia were the home 
of many of these loyal and energetic Union women — women, who 
in the face of privation, persecution, death and sometimes out- 
rages worse than death, kept up the courage and patriotic ardor 
of their husbands, brothers and lovers, and whose lofty self- 
sacrificing courage no rebel cruelties or indignities could weaken 
or abate. 



MISS HETTY A. JONES.* 




MO]N'G the thousands of noble women who devoted 
their time and services to the cause of our suffering 
soldiers during the rebellion there were few who sacri- 
ficed more of comfort, money or health, than Miss 
Hetty A. Jones of Eoxborough, in the city of Philadelphia. 
She was a daughter of the late Rev. Horatio Gates Jones, d.d., 
for many years pastor of the Lower Merion Baptist Church, and 
a sister of the Hon. J. Richter Jones, who was Colonel of the 
Fifty-eighth Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers, and who was 
killed at the head of his regiment, near Newbern, N. C, in May, 
1863, and grand-daughter of Rev. Dr. David Jones, a revo- 
lutionary chaplain, eminently patriotic. 

At the commencement of the war Miss Jones freely gave of 
her means to equip the companies which were organized in her 
own neighborhood, and when the news came of the death of her 
brave oldest brother, although for a time shocked by the occur- 
rence, she at once devoted her time and means to relieve the 
wants of the suffering. She attached herself to the Filbert 
Street Hospital in Philadelphia, and thither she went for weeks 
and months, regardless of her own comfort or health. Naturally 
of a bright and cheerful disposition, she carried these qualities 
into her work, and wherever she went she dispensed joy and 



* The sketcli of Miss Jones belonged appropriately in Part II. but the ma- 
terials for it were not received till that part of the work was printed, and we 
are therefore under the necessity of inserting it here. 

783 



784 

gladness, and the sick men seemed to welcome her presence. 
One who had abundant means of observing, bears testimony to 
the power of her brave heart and her pleasant winning smile. 
He says, " I have often seen her sit and talk away the pain, and 
make glad the heart of the wounded.'' Nor did she weary in 
well-doing. Her services at the hospital were constant and effi- 
cient, and when she heard of any sick soldier in her village she 
would visit him there and procure medicine and comforts for 
him. 

In the fall of 1864 she accompanied a friend to Fortress 
Monroe to meet his sick and wounded son, and thus was led to 
see more of the sufferings of our brave patriots. On returning 
home she expressed a wish to go to the front, and although 
dissuaded on account of her delicate health, she felt it to be 
her duty to go, and accordingly on the 2d of November, 1864, she 
started on her errand of mercy, to City Point, Va., the Head- 
quarters of General Grant. The same untiring energy, the 
same forgetfulness of self, the same devotion to the sick and 
wounded, were exhibited by her in this new and arduous field of 
labor. She became attached to the Third Division Second Corps 
Hospital of the Army of the Potomac, and at once secured the 
warm affections of the soldiers. 

She continued her work with unremitting devotion until the 
latter part of November, when she had an attack of pleurisy, 
caused no doubt, by her over exertions in preparing for the soldiers 
a Thanksgiving Dinner. On her partial recovery she wrote to 
a friend, describing her tent and its accommodations. She said : 
^' When I was sick, I did want some home comforts ; my straw 
bed was very hard. But even that difficulty was met. A kind 
lady procured some pillows from the Christian Commission, and 
sewed them together, and made me a soft bed. But I did not 
complain, for I was so much better off than the sich boys/' The 
italics are ours, not hers. She never put her own ease before her 
care for "the sick boys.'' 



MISS HETTY A. JONES. 785 

She not only attended to the temporal comforts of the soldiers, 
but she was equally interested in their spiritual welfare, and was 
wont to go to the meetings of the Christian Commission. Her 
letters home and to her friends, were full of details of these meet- 
ings, and her heart overflowed with Christian love as she spoke of 
the brave soldiers rising in scores to ask for the prayers of God's 
people. 

She continued her labors, as far as possible, on her recovery, 
but was unable to do all that her heart prompted her to attempt. 
She was urged by her friends at home to return and recruit her 
strength. In her brief journal she alludes to this, but says, 
" Another battle is expected ; and then our poor crippled boys 
will need all the care that we can give. God grant that we may 
do something for them !'' 

Two days after writing this, in her chilly, leaking tent, she was 
prostrated again. She was unwilling at first that her family 
should be made uneasy by sending for them. But her disease 
soon began to make rapid and alarming progress. She consented 
that they should be summoned. But on the 21st of December, 
1864, the day after this consent was obtained, she passed away to 
her rest. Like a faithful soldier, she died at her post. 

She was in early life led to put her trust in Christ, and was 
baptized about thirty years ago, by her father, on confession of " 
her faith. She continued from that time a loved member of the 
Lower Merion Baptist church. In her last hours she still rested 
with a calm, child-like composure on the finished work of Christ. 
Though called to die, with none of her own kindred about her, 
she was blessed wdtli the presence of her Lord, who, having loved 
his own, loves them unto the end. 

Her remains were laid beside those of her father, in the ceme- 
tery of the Baptist church at Roxborough, Pa., on Friday, the 
30th of December, 1864. A number of the convalescent soldiers 
from the Filbert Street Hospital in the city, with which she was 
connected, attended her funeral ; and her bier was borne by four 

99 



786 

of those who had so far recovered as to be able to perform this 
last office for their departed friend. 

Her memory will long be cherished by those who knew her 
best, and tears often shed over her grave by the brave soldiers 
whom she nursed in their sickness. 

The soldiers of the Filbert Street Hospital, on receiving the 
intelligence of her death, met and passed resolutions expressive 
of their high esteem and reverence for her who had been their 
faithful and untiring friend, and deep sympathy with her friends 
in their loss. 



FINAL CHAPTER. 

THE FAITHFUL BUT LESS CONSPICUOUS LABORERS, 




O abundant and universal was the patriotism and self- 
sacrifice of the loyal women of the nation that the 
long list of heroic names whose deeds of mercy we 
have recorded in the preceding pages gives only a very 
inadequate idea of woman's work in the war. These were but 
the generals or at most the commanders of regiments, and staff- 
officers, while the great army of patient workers followed in their 
train. In every department of philanthropic labor there were 
hundreds and in some, thousands, less conspicuous indeed than 
these, but not less deserving. We regret that the necessities of 
the case compel us to pass by so many of these without notice, 
and to give to others of whom we know but little beyond their 
names, only a mere mention. 

Among those who were distinguished for services in field, camp 
or army hospitals, not already named, were the following, most of 
whom rendered efficient service at Antietam or at the Naval 
Academy Hospital at Annapolis. Some of them were also at 
City Point ; Miss Mary Cary, of Albany, N. Y., and her sister, 
most faithful and efficient nurses of the sick and wounded, as 
worthy doubtless, of a more prominent position in this work as 
many others found in the preceding pages, Miss Agnes Gillis, of 
Lowell, Mass., Mrs. Guest, of Buffalo, N. Y., Miss Maria Josslyn, 
of Roxbury, Mass., Miss Ruth L. Ellis, of Bridgewater, Mass., 

787 



Miss Kate P. Thompson, of Eoxbiiry, Mass., whose labors at 
Annapolis, have probably made her permanently an invalid, Miss 
Eudora Clark, of Boston, Mass., Miss Sarah Allen, of Wilbra- 
ham, Mass., Miss Emily Gove, of Peru, N. Y., Miss Caroline 
Cox, of Mott Haven, N. Y., first at David^s Island and after- 
ward at Beverly Hospital, N. J., with Mrs. Gibbons, Miss 
Charlotte Ford, of Morristown, IS". J., Miss Ella Wolcott, of 
Elmira, N. Y., who was at the hospitals near Fortress Monroe, 
for some time, and subsequently at Point Lookout. 

Another corps of faithful hospital workers were those in the 
Benton Barracks and other hospitals, in and near St. Louis. Of 
some of these, subsequently engaged in other fields of labor we 
have already spoken ; a few others merit special mention for their 
extraordinary faithfulness and assiduity in the service; Miss 
Emily E. Parsons, the able lady superintendent of the Benton 
Barracks Hospital, gives her testimony to the efiiciency and excel- 
lent spirit of the following ladies ; Miss S. R. Lovell, of Gales- 
burg, Michigan, whose labors began in the hospitals near- Nash- 
ville, Tennessee, and in 1864 was transferred to Benton Barracks, 
but was almost immediately prostrated by illness, and after her 
recovery returned to the Tennessee hospitals. Her gentle sym- 
pathizing manners, and her kindness to the soldiers won for her 
their regard and gratitude. 

Miss Lucy J. Bissell, of Meremec, St. Louis County, . Mo., 
offered her services as volunteer nurse as soon as the call for 
nurses in 1861, was issued; and was first sent to one of the regi- 
mental hospitals at Cairo, in July, 1861, afterward to Bird^s Point, 
where she lived in a tent and subsisted on the soldiers' rations, for 
more than a year. After a short visit home she was sent in 
January, 1863, by the Sanitary Commission to Paducah, Ky., 
where she remained till the following October. In February, 1864, 
she was assigned to Benton Barracks Hospital where she continued 
till June 1st, 1864, except a short sickness contracted by hospital 
service. In July, 1864, she was transferred to Jefferson Barracks 



FINAL CHAPTER. 789 

Hospital and continued there till June, 1865, and that hospital 
being closed, served a month or two longer, in one of the others, 
in which some sick and wounded soldiers were still left. Many 
hundreds of the soldiers will testify to her untiring assiduity in 
caring for them. 

Mrs. Arabella Tannehill, of Iowa, after many months of as- 
siduous work at the Benton Barracks Hospital, went to the Nash- 
ville hospitals, where she performed excellent service, being a 
most conscientious and faithful nurse, and winning the regard and 
esteem of all those under her charge. 

Mrs. Rebecca S. Smith, of Chelsea, 111., the wife of a soldier 
in the army, had acquitted herself so admirably at the Post Hos- 
pital of Benton Barracks, that one of the surgeons of the General 
Hospital, who had formerly been surgeon of the Post, requested 
Miss Parsons to procure her services for his ward. She did so, 
and found her a most excellent and skillful nurse. 

Mrs. Caroline E. Gray, of Illinois, had also a husband in the 
army ; she was a long time at Benton Barracks and was one of 
the best nurses there, an estimable woman in every respect. 

Miss Adeline A. Lane, of Quincy, 111., a teacher before the 
war, came to Benton Barracks Hospital in the Spring of 1863, 
and after a service of many months there, returned to her home 
at Quincy, where she devoted her attention to the care of the sick 
and wounded soldiers sent there, and accomplished great good. 

Miss Martha Adams, of New York city, was long employed 
in the Fort Schuyler Hospital and subsequently at Benton 
Barracks, and was a woman of rare devotion to her work. 

Miss Jennie Tileston Spaulding, of Roxbury, Mass., was for a 
long period at Fort Schuyler Hospital, where she was much 
esteemed, and after her return home busied herself in caring for 
the families of soldiers around her. 

Miss E. M. King, of Omaha, Nebraska, was a very faithful 
and excellent nurse at the Benton Barracks Hospital. 

Mrs. Jaliana Day, the wife of a surgeon in one of the Nash- 



790 

ville hospitals, acted as a volunteer nurse for them, and by her 
protracted services there impaired her health and died before the 
close of the war. 

Other efficient nurses appointed by the Western Sanitary Com- 
mission (and there were none more efficient anywhere) were, Miss 
Carrie C. McNair, Miss N. A. Shepard, Miss C. A. Harwood, 
Miss Rebecca M. Craighead, Miss Ida Johnson, Mrs. Dorothea 
Ogden, Miss Harriet IST. Phillips, Mrs. A. Reese, Mrs. Maria 
Brooks, Mrs. Mary Otis, Miss Harriet Peabody, Mrs. M. A. 
Wells, Mrs. Florence P. Sterling, Miss N. L. Ostram, Mrs. Anne 
Ward, Miss Isabella M. Hartshorn, Mrs. Mary Ellis, Mrs. L. E. 
Lathrop, Miss Louisa Otis, Mrs. Lydia Leach, Mrs. Mary 
Andrews, Mrs. Mary Ludlow, Mrs. Hannah A. Haines and Mrs. 
Mary Allen. Most of these were from St. Louis or its vicinity. 

The following, also for the most part from St. Louis, were a23- 
pointed somewhat later by the Western Sanitary Commission, but 
rendered excellent service. Mrs. M. I. Ballard, Mrs. E. O. Gib- 
son, Mrs. L. D. Aldrich, Mrs. Houghton, Mrs. Sarah A. Barton, 
Mrs. Olive Freeman, Mrs. Anne M. Shattuck, Mrs. E. C. Bren- 
dell, Mrs. E. J. Morris, Miss Fanny Marshall, Mrs. Elizabeth 
A. Mchols, Mrs. H. A. Reid, Mrs. Reese, Mrs. M. A. Stetler, 
Mrs. M. J. Dykeman, Misses Marian and Clara McClintock, 
Mrs. Sager, Mrs. Peabody, Mrs. C. C. Hagar, Mrs. J. E. Hickox, 
Mrs. L. L. Campbell, Miss Deborah Dougherty and Mrs. Ferris. 

As in other cities, many ladies of high social position, devoted 
themselves with great assiduity to voluntary visiting and 
nursing at the hospitals. Among these were Mrs. Chauncey I. 
Filley, wife of Mayor Filley, Mrs. Robert Anderson, wife of 
General Anderson, Mrs. Jessie B. Fremont, wife of General 
Fremont, Mrs. Clinton B. Fisk, wife of General Fisk, Mrs. E. 
M. Webber, Mrs. A. M. Clark, Mrs. John Campbell, Mrs. 
W. F. Cozzens, Mrs. E. W. Davis, Miss S. F. McCracken, 
Miss Anna M. Debenham, since deceased. Miss Susan Bell, Miss 
Charlotte Ledergerber, Mrs. S. C. Davis, Mrs. Hazard, Mrs. T. D. 



FINAL CHAPTER. 791 

Edgar, Mrs. George Partridge, Miss E. A. Hart, since deceased, 
Mrs. H. A. Nelson, Mrs. F. A. Holden, Mrs. Hicks, Mrs. Baily, 
Mrs. Elizabeth Jones, Mrs. C. V. Barker, Miss Bettie Brodhead, 
Mrs. T. M. Post, Mrs. E. J. Page, Miss Jane Patrick, since de- 
ceased, Mrs. R. H. Stone, Mrs. C. P. Coolidge, Mrs. S. E. Ward, 
Mrs. Washington King, Mrs. Wyllys King, Miss Fales, since 
deceased. 

The following were among the noble women at Springfield, 111., 
who were most devoted in their labors for the soldier in forward- 
ing sanitary supplies, in visiting the hospitals in and near Spring- 
field, in sustaining the Soldiers' Home in that city, and in aiding 
the families of soldiers. Mrs. Lucretia Jane Tilton, Miss Cath- 
arine Tilton, M»6. Lucretia P. Wood, Mrs. P. C. Latham, Mrs. 
M. E. Halbert, Mrs. Zimmerman, Mrs. J. D. B. Salter, Mrs. John 
Ives, Mrs. Mary Engleman, Mrs. Paul Selby, Mrs. S. H. Melvin, 
Mrs. Stoneberger, Mrs. Schaums, Mrs. E. Curtiss, Mrs. L. Snell, 
Mrs. J. Nutt and Mrs. J. P. Reynolds. Mrs. R. H. Bennison, 
of Quincy, 111., was also a faithful hospital visitor and friend of 
the soldier. Mrs. Dr. Ely, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, efficient in 
every good work throughout the war, and at its close the active 
promoter and superintendent of a Home for Soldiers' Orphans, 
near Davenport, Iowa, is deserving of all honor. 

Miss Georgiana Willets, of Jersey City, N. J., a faithful and 
earnest helper at the front from 1864 to the end of the war, 
deserves especial mention, as do also Miss Molineux, sister of 
General Molineux and Miss McCabe, of Brooklyn, N. Y., who 
were, throughout the war, active in aiding the soldiers by all the 
means in their power. Miss Sophronia Bucklin, of Auburn, N. 
Y., an untiring and patient worker among the soldiers of the 
Army of the Potomac, also deserves a place in our record. 

Cincinnati had a large band of noble hospital workers, women 
who gave freely of their own property as well as their personal 
services for the care and comfort of the soldier. Among 
these were, Mrs. Crafts J. Wright, wife of Colonel Crafts 



792 woman's work in the civil war. 

J. Wright, was among the first hospital visiters of the city, 
and was unwearied in her efforts to provide comforts for the 
soldiers in the general hospitals of the city as well as for the sick 
or wounded soldiers of her husband's regiment in the field. Mrs. 
C. W. Starbuck, Mrs. Peter Gibson, Mrs. William Woods and 
Mrs. Caldwell, were also active in visiting the hospitals and gave 
largely to the soldiers who were sick there. Miss Penfield and 
Mrs. Elizabeth S. Comstock, of Michigan, Mrs. C. E. Eussell, of 
Detroit, Mrs. Harriet B. Dame, of Wisconsin and the Misses 
Rexford, of Illinois, were remarkably efficient, not only in the 
hospitals at home, but at the front, where they were long engaged 
in caring for the soldiers. 

From Niagara Falls, N. Y., Miss Elizabeth L. Porter, sister of 
the late gallant Colonel Peter A. Porter, went to the Baltimore 
Hospitals and for nineteen months devoted her time and her 
ample fortune to the service of the soldiers, with an assiduity 
which has rendered her an invalid ever since. 

In Louisville, Ky., Mrs. Menefee and Mrs. Smith, wife of 
the Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church for the diocese of 
Kentucky, were the leaders of a faithful band of hospital visitors 
in that city. 

Boston was filled with patriotic women; to name them all 
would be almost like publishing a directory of the city. Mrs. 
Lowell, who gave two sons to the war, both of whom were 
slain at the head of their commands, was herself one of the 
most zealous laborers in behalf of the soldier in Boston or 
its vicinity. Like Miss Wormeley and Miss Gilson, she took a 
contract for clothing from the government, to provide work for 
the soldiers' families, preparing the work for them and giving 
them more than she received. Her daughter. Miss Anna Low^ell, 
was on one of the Hospital Transports in the Peninsula, and ar- 
rived at Harrison's Landing, Avhere she met the news of her 
brother's death in the battles of the Seven Days, but burying 
her sorrows in her heart, she took charge of a ward on the Trans- 



FINAL CHAPTER. 793 

port when it returned, and from the summer of 1862 till the 
close of the war was in charge as lady superintendent, of the 
Armory Square Hospital, Washington. Other ladies hardly less 
active were Mrs. Amelia L. Holmes, wifeof the poet and essayist, 
Miss Hannah E. Stevenson, Miss Ira E. Loring, Mrs. George H. 
Shaw, Mrs. Martin Brimmer and Mrs. William B. Rogers. Miss 
Mary Felton, of Cambridge, Mass., served for a long time with her 
friend. Miss Anna Lowell, at Armory Square Hospital, Washing- 
ton. Miss Louise M. Alcott, daughter of A. B. Alcott, of Con- 
cord, Mass., and herself the author of a little book on " Hospital 
Scenes,'^ as well as other works, was for some time an efficient 
nurse in one of the Washington hospitals. 

Among the leaders in the organization of Soldiers' Aid Societies 
in the smaller cities and towns, those ladies who gave the impulse 
which during the whole war vibrated through the souls of those 
who came within the sphere of their influence, there are very 
many eminently deserving of a place in our record. A few we 
must name. Mrs. Heyle, Mrs. Ide and Miss Swayne, daughter 
of Judge Swayne of the United States Supreme Court, all of 
Columbus, Ohio, did an excellent work there. The Soldiers' 
Home of that city, founded and sustained by their efforts, was one 
of the best in the country. Mrs. T. W. Seward, of Utica, was 
indefatigable in her efforts for maintaining in its highest condition 
of activity the Aid Society of that city. Mrs. Sarah J. Cowen was 
similarly efficient in Hartford, Conn. Miss Long, at Kochester, IST. 
Y., was the soul of the efforts for the soldier there, and her labors 
were warmly seconded by many ladies of high standing and 
earnest patriotism. In Norwalk, Ohio, Mrs. Lizzie H. Farr was 
one of the most zealous coadjutors of those ladies who managed 
with such wonderful ability the affairs of the Soldiers' Aid So- 
ciety of Northern Ohio, at Cleveland. To her is due the origi- 
nation of the Alert Clubs, associations of young girls for the pur- 
pose of working for the soldiers and their families, which rapidly 

spread thence over the country. Never flagging in her efforts for 
100 



794 

the soldiers, Mrs. Farr exerted a powerful and alrngst electric in- 
fluence over the region of which Norwalk is the centre. 

Equally efficient, and perhaps exerting a wider influence, was 
the Secretary of the Soldiers' Aid Society at Peoria, 111., Miss 
Mary E. Bartlett, a lady of superior culture and refinement, and 
indefatigable in her exertions for raising supplies for the soldiers, 
from the beginning to the close of the war. The Western Sani- 
tary Commission had no more active auxiliary out of St. Louis, 
than the Soldiers' Aid Society of Peoria. 

Among the ladies who labored for the relief of the Freedmen, 
Miss Sophia Knight of South Reading, Mass., deserves a place. 
After spending five or six months in Benton Barracks Hos- 
pital (May to October, 1864) she went to I^atchez, Miss., and 
engaged as teacher of the Freedmen, under the direction of the 
Western Sanitary Commission. Not satisfied with teaching the 
colored children, she instructed also the colored soldiers in the 
fort, and visited the people in their homes and the hospitals for 
sick and wounded colored soldiers. She remained in JSTatchez un- 
til May, 1865. In the following autumn she. accepted an appoint- 
ment from the New England Freed man's Aid Society as teacher 
of the Freedmen in South Carolina, on Edisto Island, where she 
remained until July, 1866; she then returned to Boston, where 
she is still engaged in teaching freedmen. 

But time and space would both fail us were we to attempt to 
put on record the tithe of names which memory recalls of those 
whose labors and sacrifices of health and life for the cause of the 
nation, have been not less heroic or noble than those of the soldiers 
whom they have sought to serve. In the book of God's remem- 
brance their names and their deeds of love and mercy are all in- 
scribed, and in the great day of reckoning, when that record shall 
be proclaimed in the sight and hearing of an assembled universe, 
it will be their joyful privilege to hear from the lips of the 
Supreme Judge, the welcome words, ^' Inasmuch as ye did it unto 
one of the least of these, my brethren, ye did it unto me." 



INDEX 

OF NAMES OF WOMEN WHOSE SERVICES ARE RECORDED IN 

THIS BOOK. 



Aberxethy, Mrs. C, 528. 

Adams, Miss H. A., 74, 79, 630, 636, 639. 

Adams, Miss Martha, 789. 

Adams, Mrs. N., 594. 

Alcott, Miss Louise M., 793. 

Aldrich, Mrs. L. D., 790. 

Aldrich, Milly, 85. 

Allen, Mrs. Mary, 790. 

Allen, Miss Phebe, 502. 

Allen, Miss Sarah, 459, 788. 

Anderson, Mrs. Kate B., 737. 

Anderson, Mrs. Robert, 630, 790. 

Andrews, Emma, 84. 

Andrews, Mrs. Mary, 790. 

Archer, Mrs., 79. 

Armstrong, Miss, 209. 

Babcock, Miss Grace, 590. 

Bacon, Mrs. Elbridge, 463. 

Bailey, Mrs., 301, 731. 

Bailey, Mrs. Catharine, 737. 

Bailey, Mrs. Hannah F., 737. 

Baily, Mrs., 791. 

Baker, Miss Delphine P., 754-759. 

Bakewell, Miss. 616. 

Ballard, Mrs. M. I., 790. 

Balustier, Mrs., 301, 732. 

Barker, Mrs. C. K, 630, 632. 

Barker, Mrs. C. V., 791. 

Barker, Mrs. Stephen, 186. 200-211. 

Barlow, Mrs. Arabella Griffith, 88. 225- 

233. 
Barnard, Mrs., 664. 
Barnett, Mrs., 780. 
Barrows, Mrs. Ellen B., 737. 
Bartlett, Miss Mary E., 794. 
Bartlett, Mrs. Abner, 84. 
Barton, Mrs. Sarah A., 790. 
Barton, Miss Clara Harlowe, 73, 1 1 1-132. 
Baylis, Mrs. H., 528. 
Beck, Mrs., 157, 159, 485, 713. 
Bell, Miss Annie, 616. 
Bell, Miss Susan J., 630, 790. 
Bellows, Mrs. H. W., 302. 
Bennett, Miss, 780. 



Bennison, Mrs. R. H., 791. 
Bergen, Miss Rebecca, 428. 
Bickerdyke, Mrs. Mary A., 74, 163, 165- 

170, 172-186, 209, 512. 
Biddle, Misses, 644. 
Bigelow, Mrs. R. M., 738-740. 
Billing, Mrs. R. K., 738, 739. 
Billing. Miss Rose M., 460, 738, 739, 742. 
Bird, Miss, 590. 
Bissell, Miss Lucy J., 788. 
Bissell, Miss Mary. 616. 
Blackman, Miss M. A., 429, 430. 
Blackwell, Miss Emily, 527. 
Blackwell, Miss Elizabeth, 527, 528, 529. 
Blanehard, Miss Anna, 600. 
Blanchard, Miss H.. 600. 
Booth, Mrs., 769. 
Botta, Mrs. Vincenzo, 528. 
Boyer, Mrs. Margaret, 736. 
Bradford, Miss Charlotte, 153, 301, 316, 

731 732. 
Bradley, Miss Amy M., 212-224, 301, 316, 

584, 732, 748. 
Brady, Mrs. Mary A., 597, 647-9. 
Brayton, Miss Mary Clark, 74, 79, 540, 

543, 545, 546, 547-552. 
Breckinridge, Miss Margaret E., 74, 88, 

187, 199, 779. 
Brendell, Mrs. E. C, 790. 
Brewster, Mrs., 664. 
Bridgham, Mrs. S. W., 531. 
Brimmer, Mrs. Martin, 557, 793. 
Broadhead, Mrs. Bettie, 632, 791. 
Brooks, Mrs. Maria, 790. 
Brownell, Mrs. Kady, 773, 774. 
Bryden, Mrs., 780. 
Bucklin, Miss Sophronia, 791. 

Caldwell, Mrs., 792. 
Campbell, Mrs. John, 790. 
Campbell, Mrs. Lucy L., 790. 
Campbell, Miss Valeria, 79, 594. 595. 
Canfield, Mrs. S. A. Martha, 495. 
Carver. Miss Anna, 647. 
Cf ry, Miss Mary, 459, 787. 

795 



796 



INDEX. 



Case, Mrs. Cynthia, 742. 

Cassidy, Mrs. Mary A., 737. 

Chase, Miss Nellie, 644. 

Chapman, Mrs. 354. 

Chapman, Miss G-. P... 714. 

Chipman, Mrs. H. L., 594. 

Clapp, Mrs. Anna L., 79. 630. 634-636, 

715, 767, 779. 
Clapp, Mrs. Samuel H., 599. 
Clark, Mrs. A. M., 790. 
Clark, Miss Eudora, 458, 788. 
Clark, Mrs. Lincoln, 165. 
Colby, Mrs. Eobert, 530. 
Colfax, Mrs. Harriet E., 74, 395-399. 
Collins, Miss Ellen, 79, 528, 533, 534, 536. 
Colt, Mrs. Henrietta L., 79, 568, 586, 607, 

609-613. 
Colwell. Mrs. Stephen, 643. 
Conrad, Mrs. R. E., 377. 
Constant, Mrs. Nettie C, 714. 
Coolidge, Mrs. C. P., 791. 
Combs. Mrs. Sarah, 715. 
Comstock, Mrs. Elizabeth S., 792. 
Cowen, Mrs. Sarah J., 793. 
Courteney, Mrs. Mary, 737. 
Cox, Miss Caroline, 788. 
CozzeDS, Mrs. W. F., 790. 
Craighead, Miss Eebecca M., 790. 
Crawshaw, Mrs. Joseph, 630, 715. 
Curtis, Mrs. George, 537. 
Curtiss, Mrs. E., 791. 

Dada, Miss Hattie A., 431-439. 
Dame, Mrs. Harriet B., 792. 
Dana, Miss Emily W., 456, 462. 
Davis, Miss Clara, 295, 400-403, 480. ■ 
Davis, Mrs. E. W., 790. 
Davis, Mrs. G-. T. M., 352-356, 666, 680. 
Davis, Mrs. Samuel C, 630, 790. 
Day, Mrs. Juliana, 789. 
Debenham, Miss Anna M., 630, 790. 
Delafield, Mrs. Louisa M., 607. 
Denham, Mrs. Z., 644. 
Detmold, Miss Z. T., 537. 
Divers, Bridget, 480. 593, 771-773. 
Dix, Miss Dorothea L., 71, 97-108, 134, 

274, 290, 431, 432, 449, 472, 478, 512, 

579. 
Dodge, Mrs., 664. 
Don Carlos, Mrs. Minnie, 780. 
D'Oremieulx, Mrs. T., 528, 531. 
Dougherty, Miss Deborah, 790. 
Duane, Miss M. M., 599. 
Dunlap, Miss S. B., 599. 
Dupee, Miss. Mary E., 456, 462, 463, 464. 
Dykeman, Mrs. M. J., 790. 

Eaton, Mrs. J. S., 463, 507, 508. 
Eaton, Mrs. Lucien, 715. 
Edgar, Mrs. T. D., 791. 
Edson, Mrs. Sarah P., 440-447. 
Edwards, Miss, 780. 
Elkinton. Mrs. Anna A.. 737. 
Elliott, Miss Melcenia, 74, 380-384. 



Ellis, Mrs. Marv, 790. 
Ellis, Miss Euth L., 458, 787. 
Elv, Mrs. Charles L., 630. 
Ely, Mrs. Dr., 791. 
Englemann, Mrs. Marv, 791. 
Etheridge, Mrs. Annie,' 218, 301, 593, 747 
-753. 



Fales, Mrs. Almira, 73,279-283,449,450, 

483, 677'. 
Fales, Miss, 791. 
Farr, Mrs Lizzie H., 793. 
Fellows, Mrs. W. M., 530, 
Felton, Miss Mary, 793. 
Femington, Mrs. Sarah, 736. 
Fenn, Mrs. Curtis T., 660-670. 
Fernald, Mrs. James E.. 463. 
Ferris, Mrs., 790. 
Field, Mrs. David Dudley, 88. 
Field, Mrs. Mary E., 737. 
Field, Miss, 737. 
Field, Mrs. C. W., 528. 
Field, Mrs. Samuel, 599. 
Filley, Mrs. Chauncey I., 790. 
Fish, Mrs. Hamilton, 528, 529. 
Fisk, Mrs. Clinton B., 713, 790. 
Flanders, Mrs. Benj., 780. 
Flanders, Miss Fanny, 780. 
Flanders, Miss Florence, 780. 
Fogg, Mrs. Mary E., 715. 
Fogg, Mrs. Isabella, 463. 506-510. 
Follett, Mrs. Joseph E., 590. 
Foote, Miss Kate, 418. 
Ford, Miss Charlotte, 459, 788. 
Fox, Miss Harriet, 463. 
Francis, Miss Abby, 209. 
Frederick, Mrs. M. L., 599. 
Freeman, Mrs. Olive, 790. 
Fremont, Mrs. Jessie B., 274, 790. 
Frietehie, Barbara, 522, 761-763, 767. 
Furness, Mrs. W. H., 599. 



Gage, Mrs. Frances Dana, 683-690. 

Gardiner. Miss M., 301. 732. 

George, Mrs. E. E., 511-513. 

Gibbons, Mrs. A. H., 467-476, 788. 

Gibbons, Miss Sarah H., 467-476. 

Gibson, Mrs. E. 0., 396, 399, 790. 

Gibson, Mrs. Peter, 792. 

Gillespie, Mrs. E. D., 599. 

Gillis, Miss Agnes, 459, 787. 

Gilson, Miss Helen L., 71, 73. 80, 81, 

133-148, 232, 301, 316, 713, 732. 
Glover, Miss Eliza S., 630. 
Gove, Miss Emily, 459, 788. 
GrafF, Mrs. C, 599. 
Gray, Mrs. Caroline E., 789. 
Greble, Mrs. Edwin, 503, 504. 
Green, Mrs., 736. 
Grier, Mrs. Maria C, 597-599, 600, 601, 

779. 
Griffin, Mrs. Josephine E., 707-709. 
Griffin, Mrs. William Preston, 301, 316, 

528, 529, 530, 534. 



INDEX. 



797 



Grover, Mrs. Mary, 736. 
Grover, Mrs. Priscilla, 736. 
Grover, Miss, 737. 
Guest, Mrs., 459, 787. 

Hagar, Mrs. C. C, 704, 790. 

Hagar, Miss Sarah J., 704, 706. 

Haines, Mrs. Hannah A., 790. 

Hall, Miss Maria M. C, 157, 247, 290, 401, 

448-454, 456, 457, 460, 483, 485, 644. 
Hall, Miss Susan E., 431-439. 
Halbert, Mrs. M. E., 791. 
Hallowell, Mrs. M. M., 710-712. 
Hancock, Miss Cornelia, 284-286, 487, 

644. 
Harlan, Mrs. James, 676, 678. 
Harmon, Miss Amelia, 777. 778. 
Harris, Mrs. John, 72, 73, 79, 149-160, 

367, 450, 482, 483, 485, 596, 643, 644, 

645, 713. 
Harris, Miss W. F.. 742, 743. 
Hart, Miss E. A., 791. 
Hartshorne, Miss Isabella M., 790. 
Harvey, Mrs. Cordelia A. P., 73, 164, 

260-268, 729. 
Harwood, Miss C. A., 790. 
Hawley, Miss E. P., 600. 
Hawley, Mrs. Harriet Foote, 416-419, 

513,713. 
Hazard, Mrs., 790. 
Helmbold, Mrs. Eliza, 737. 
Heyle, Mrs., 793. 
Hickox, Mrs. J. E., 790. 
Hicks, Mrs., 791. 
Hoadley, Mrs. George, 79. 
Hoes, Mrs. H. F., 713. 
Hodge, Mrs., 780. 
Hoge, Mrs. A. H., 74, 79, 178, 561, 562- 

576, 580, 583, 585. 589, 610. 
Holden, Mrs. F. A., 791. 
Holland, Miss Sarah, 736. 
Holmes, Mrs. Amelia L., 793. 
Holmes, Miss Belle, 630. 
Holstein, Mrs. William. H., -251-259. 
Home, Miss Jessie, 422. 427, 428, 480. 
Hooper, Mrs. Lucy H., 764. 
Horton, Mrs. Elizabeth, 737. 
Hosmer, Mrs. 0. E., 719-724. 
Houghton, Mrs., 790. 
Howe, Miss Abbie J., 458, 465, 466 
Howe, Mrs. Charles, 780. 
Howe, Mrs. T. 0., 164. 
Howell, Mrs., 780. 

Howland, Mrs. Eliza W., 301, 324-326. 
Howland, Mrs. Eobert S., 88, 326, 327. 
Humphrey, Miss, 164. 
Husband, Mrs. Mary Morris, 157. 287- 

298, 301, 316, 401, 451, 483, 485, 486, 

507, 596. 

Ide, Mrs., 793. 

Ives, Mrs. John, 791. 

Jackson, Mrs. Margaret A., 607. 
Jessup, Mrs. A. D., 599. 



Johnson, Miss Addie E., 399. 

Johnson, Miss Ida, 790. 

Johnson, Mrs. J. Warner, 599. 

Johnson, Mrs., 209, 210. 

Johnston, Mrs. Sarah K., 269-272, 779. 

Jones, Mrs. Elizabeth, 791. 

Jones, Miss Hetty A., 783, 786. 

Jones, Mrs. Joel, 79, 643. 

Josslyn, Miss Maria, 459, 787. 

Kellogg, Mrs. S. B., 630. 
King, Miss E. M., 789. , 
King, Mrs. Washington, 630, 791. 
King. Mrs. Wyllys, 791. 
Kirchner, Mrs. Dr., 780. 
Kirkland. Mrs. Caroline M., 88, 528. 
Knight, Miss A. M., 705. 
Knight, Miss Sophia, 794. 
Krider, Miss, 737. 

Lane, Miss Adeline A., 789. 

Lane, Mrs. David, 530, 537. 

Latham, Mrs. P. C, 791. 

Lathrop, Mrs. L. E., 790. 

Lathrop, Mrs., 599. 

Leach, Mrs. Lydia, 790. 

Xiedergerber, Miss Charlotte, 790. 

Lee, Miss Amanda, 480, 486, 737. 

Lee, Mrs. Mary W., 73, 157, 4*80-488, 

596, 644, 047, 733, 737. 
Little, Miss Anna P., 647. 
Livermore, Mrs. Mary A., 74, 7^ 85. 

178, 359, 561, 566, 569, 577-589, CW. 
Long, Miss, 793. 
Loring, Miss Ira E., 557, 793. 
Lovejoy, Miss Sarah E. M., 714. 
Lovell, Miss S. E., 788. 
Lowell, Miss Anna, 792, 793. 
Lowell, Mrs., 792. 
Lowry, Mrs. Ellen J., 736. 
Ludlow, Mrs. Mary, 790. 

McCabe, Miss, 791. 
MeClintock, Miss Clara, 790. 
McClintock, Miss Marian, 790. 
McCracken, Miss Sarah F., 790. 
McEwen, Mrs. Hetty M., 764-766. 767. 
McFadden, Miss Ea'chel W., 79, 616. 
McKav, Mrs. Charlotte E., 514-516. 
McMeens, Mrs. Anna C, 491, 492. 
McMillan, Mrs., 616. 
McNair, Miss Carrie C, 790. 
Maertz, Miss Louisa, 74, 390-394. 
Maltby. Mrs. F. F., 630. 
Mann, Miss Maria E., 697-703. 
Marsh, Mrs. M. M., 534, 621-629. 
Marshall. Miss Fanny, 790. 
Mason, Mrs. Emily, 737. 
May, Miss Abbv W., 79, 554-557. 
Mayhew, Mrs. Euth S., 463, 506. 
Meivin, Mrs. S. H.. 791. 
Mendenhall, Mrs. Elizabeth S., 79, 494, 

617-620. 
Menefee, Mrs.. 792. 
Merrill, Mrs. Eunice D., 457, 462. 



798 



INDEX. 



Merritt, Mrs., 302. 

Mills, Mrs., 780. 

Mitchell, Miss Ellen E., 420-426. 

Molineaux, Miss, 791. 

Moore, Mrs. Clara J., 597, 599. 

Moore, Mrs., (of Knoxville, Tenn.), 767, 

768. 
Morris, Mrs. E. J., 790. 
Morris, Miss, 354, 496. 
Morris. Miss Eachel W., 600. 
Moss, Miss M. J., 600. 
Munsell, Mrs.,Jane R., 522, 523. 
Murdoch, Miss Ellen E., 616, 633. 

Nash, Miss C, 537. 
Nelson, Mrs. H. A., 791. 
Newhall, Miss Susan, 456, 461, 464. 
Nichols, Mrs. Elizabeth A., 790. 
Noye, Miss Helen M., 456, 459. 
Nutt, Mrs. J., 791. 

Ogden, Mrs. Dorothea, 790. 
Oliver, Mrs., 664. 
Ostram, Miss N. L., 790. 
Otis, Miss Louisa, 790. 
Otis, Mrs. Mary, 790. 

Page, Miss Eliza, 631. 

Page, Mrs. E. J., 791. 

Painter, Mrs. Hetty K., 644, 647. 

Palmer, Mrs. Mary E., 81, 88, 630, 640- 

642. 
Palmer, Mrs. John, 594. 
Pancoast, Mrs., 656. 
Parrish, Mrs. Lvdia G., 362-373, 599. 
Parsons, Miss Emily E., 74, 273-278, 

382, 489, 502, 788. 
Partridge, Mrs. George, 791. 
Patrick, Miss Jane, 791. 
Peabody, Miss Harriet, 790. 
Peabody, Mrs., 790. 
Penfield, Miss, 792. 
Pettes, Miss Mary Dwight, 385-389. 
Phelps, Mrs. John S., 520, 521, 713, 779. 
Pierson, Miss Marv, 457, 462. 
Phillips, Miss Harriet N., 790. 
Pinkham, Miss, 644. 
Plummer, Mrs. Eliza G., 73, 88, 735. 
Pluramer, Mrs. S. A., 396, 399. 
Pomeroy, Mrs. Lucy G., 88, 691-696. 
Pomeroy, Mrs. Robert, 664. 
Porter. Mrs. Eliza C, 74, 161-171, 174, 

182, 183, 185. 186, 209, 512, 560. 
Porter, Miss Elizabeth L., 791. 
Post, Miss A., 537. 
Post, Mrs. T. M., 630, 791. 
Preble, Mrs. William, 463. 

Quimby, Miss Almira, 456-^62. 

Reese, Mrs. A., 790. 
Reid, Mrs. H. A., 790. 
Reifsnyder, Miss Hattie S., 742. 
Reynolds, Mrs. J. P., 791. 



Rexford, Misses, 792. 

Rich, Miss, 370. 

Richardson, Mrs., 780. 

Ricketts, Mrs. Fanny L., 480, 517-519. 

Robinson, Miss Belle, 742. 

Rogers, Mrs. William B., 557, 793. 

Ross, Miss Anna Maria, 88, 343-351, 644, 

733. 
Rouse, Mrs. B., 79, 540, 544, 545. 
Royer, Miss Alice F., 713. 
Russell, Mrs. E. A., 679. 
Russell, Mrs. E. J., 477-479. 
Russell, Mrs. C. E., 792. 



Safford, Miss Mary J., 163, 357-361. 

Sager, Mrs., 790. 

Salomon, Mrs. Eliza, 613, 614. 

Salter, Mrs. J. D. B., 791. 

Sampson, Mrs., 644. 

Schaums, Mrs., 791. 

Schuyler, Mrs. G. L., 528. 

Schuyler, Miss Louisa Lee, 79, 532, 534, 

537. 
Selby, Mrs. Paul, 791. 
Seward, Mrs. T. W., 793. 
Seymour, Mrs. Horatio, 79, 590-592. 
Sharpless, Miss Hattie R., 741-743. 
Shattuck, Mrs. Anna M., 790. 
Shaw, the Misses, 537. 
Shaw, Mrs. G. H., 557, 793. 
Sheffield, Miss Mary E., 714. 
Sheads, Miss Carrie, 776, 777. 
Shephard, Miss N. A., 790. 
Sibley, Miss S. A., 594. 
Small, Mrs. Jerusha C, 493, 494. 
Smith, Mrs. Aubrey H., 599. 
Smith, Mrs. Hannah, 736. 
Smith, Mrs., 792. 
Smith, Mrs. Eliza J., 737. 
Smith, Mrs. Rebecca S., 789. 
Snell, Mrs. L., 791. 
Spaulding Miss Jennie Tileston, 789. 
Spencer, Mrs. R. H., 404-415. 
Springer, Mrs. C. R., 80, 630, 639, 640. 
Starr, Mrs. Lucy E., 713, 728-730. 
Starbuck, Mrs. C. W., 792. 
Stearns, Mrs. S. Burger, 760. 
Steel, Mrs.. 209. 
Sterling, Mrs. Florence P., 790. 
Stetler, Mrs. M. A., 790. 
Stevens, Miss Gertude, 537. 
Stevens, Miss Melvina, 782. 
Stevens, Mrs. N., 715. 
Stevenson, Miss Hannah E., 793. 
Steward, Miss Ella, 616. 
Stille, Mrs. Charles J., 599. 
Stone, Mrs. R. H., 791. 
Stoneberger, Mrs.. 791. 
Stranahan, Mrs. Mariamne F., 79, 537, 

651-658. 
Streeter. Mrs. Elizabeth M., 655-659. 
Strong. Mrs. George T., 301. 
Swett. Mrs. J. A., 528. 
Swayne, Miss, 793. 



INDEX. 



799 



Tannehill, Mrs. Arabella, 789. 
Taylor, Miss Alice, 289, 240, 768, 769. 
Taylor, Mrs. Nellie Maria, 234, 240, 779, 

780. 
Terry, Miss Ellen F., 540, 543, 546, 547. 
Tevis, Mrs. J., 599. 
Thomas, Mrs. E., 496. 
Thomas, Mrs. (of New Orleans), 780. 
Thompson, Miss Kate P., 458, 788. 
Ticknor, Miss Anna, 557. 
Tieknor, Mrs. George, 323, 557. 
Tileston, Miss Jennie, 789. 
Tilton, Miss Catherine, 791. 
Tilton, Mrs. Lucretia Jane, 791. 
Tinkham, Mrs. Smith, 720, 722. 
Titcomb, Miss Louise, 247, 453. 456,461, 

463. 
Titlow. Mrs. Effie, 522, 767. 
Tompkins, Miss Cornelia M.. 489, 490. 
Trotter, Mrs. Laura, 301. 
Turehin, Madame, 480, 770, 771. 
Tvler, Mrs. Adaline, 241-250, 453, 456, 

461, 464. 
Tyson, Miss, 157, 159, 485, 713. 

Usher, Miss Eebecca E., 456, 461, 463. 

Vance, Miss Mary, 429, 430. 
Vanderkieft, Mrs. Dr., 247. 

Wade, Mrs. Jennie, 88, 775, 776. 
Wade, Mrs. Mary B., 736. 
Walker, Miss Adeline, 456, 457, 462. 
Wallace, Miss, 209. 
Wallace, Mrs. Martha A., 73. 



Ward, Mrs. Anne, 790. 

Ward, Mrs. S. E., 791. 

Waterbury, Miss Kate E., 651, 658. 

Waterman, Mrs., 644. 

Webber, Mrs. E. M., 790. 

Weed, Mrs. H. M., 715. 

Wells, Mrs. Shepard, 497, 498, 779. 

Whetten, Miss Harriet Douglas, 301. 316, 

322. 
Whitaker, Miss Mary A., 714. 
Wibrey, Mrs., 780. 
Willets, Miss Georgiana, 791. 
Williams, Miss, 245. 
Wiswall, Miss Hattie, 725-727. 
Witherell, Mrs, E. C, 499-501. 
Wittenmeyer, Mrs. Annie, 374-379, 509. 
Woleott, Miss Ella, 459, 788. 
Wolfley, Mrs., 780. 
Wolfley, Miss Carrie, 780. 
Wood, "Mrs. Lucretia P., 791. 
Woods, Mrs. William. 792. 
Woolsev, Miss Georgiana M., 301, 303, 

322,323. 324, 327-342, 472. 
Woolsey. Miss Jane Stuart, 322, 324, 342, 

472, 713. 
Woolsey, Miss Sarah C, 322, 342. 
Woolsey, Mrs., 328. 
Worraeley. Miss Katharine P., 80, 301, 

303, 318-323, 327, 480. 
Wright, Mrs. Crafts J., 791. 

Young, Miss M. A. B., 459. 

Zimmermann, Mrs., 791. 



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